Imipramine (Tofranil) In the Control of Enuresis

The Development of Sleep Medicine: A Historical Sketch

“…93,94 Sleep enuresis, or enuresis nocturna, was first mentioned in the medical literature on children in the second half of the 17 th century, [121][122][123] and later became the pediatric sleep problem with the highest number of medical references, probably due to the fact that bedwetting could be managed finally quite effectively by newly developed behavioral techniques 124 and by drugs. 125 During the 19 th century, information about sleep disturbances across development concerned mainly children and came from the medical domain, usually through clinical observations of single cases. Clinical descriptions referred sleep disturbances mainly to CNS pathology or physical diseases.…”

The Use of Imipramine in the Treatment of Enuresis a Review of the Literature

“…l\1eusert (27) treated seven patients with imipramine with the dosage ranging from 25 mg. for a nineteen year old to 10 mg. three times daily for six children ages [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. He reported six successes and 'one failure' but there were no controls nor were specific results mentioned.…”

“…They did not differentiate between age groups. Abrams ( 1) studied a sample of thirteen emotionally disturbed in-patients (ages [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. This study used controls and reported no significant difference between imipramine and a placebo.…”

“…In 1966 Rydzynski and Weychert (36) studied 15 out-patients (13 males and two females ages [8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. Eleven of these children had been treated previously with various drugs with the result of improvement in one child.…”

“…The authors concluded that imipramine is useful in the management of enuresis. Miller, Champelli, and Dinello (28) completed a controlled double-blind study using crossover techniques and placebos with fiftysix enuretic children (ages [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] and reported that the drug significantly reduced enuretic nights compared with record keeping (no pills) and with placebos (p < .01). Other conclusions of this study were that imipramine was equally effective for boys or girls and that the drug worked better with high-frequency enuresis than with low-frequency enuresis (p < .05).…”