Urinary Tract Infection-A Survey of Local Population

Urinary Tract Infection, commonly known as UTI, affects as many as 50% women at least once during their lifetime. All individuals are susceptible to Urinary Tract Infection (UTI); however the prevalence of infection differs with age, sex and certain predisposing factors. With the above background in mind we conducted a survey of the local population (women of 3 age groups) to compare the urinary tract microbial community of control individuals with the UTI positive patients. Attempts were made to identify pathogens through Serum Bactericidal Antibody Response. 200 urine samples collected from control as well as UTI patients were randomly inoculated in parallel on four varieties of chromogenic agar plates and the Colony Forming Units (CFU) per milliliters (ml) of each microbe was determined. The serum bactericidal antibody assay was performed to demonstrate the presence of serum antibodies with bactericidal activity against the bacterium found in urine. However, with further experimental analysis, this bactericidal activity was found to be non specific and a similar percentage of bacteriolysis was observed incase of the control population also. 10⁴-10⁵ CFU mL^-1 was the demarcating value between normal and pathological samples in asymptomatic cases. A significant variation was also noted in the microbial profile of various age groups. E. coli is the most prevalent pathogen in the post menopausal group. 15 different bacterial isolates were obtained of which the 16S rDNA sequence of the 6 novel ones are available in GenBank. The control and patient population showed a clear cut variation in the percentage of urinary tract microbes.