Molecular Epidemiology of E. coli strains Isolated from Urinary Tract Infections in Children

Introduction:  Urinary tract infection is one of the most common causes of the patients' admission  to hospitals and clinics .Therefore, its emergency treatment is very important. Escherichia coli is the most important agent causing urinary tract infection (UTI) in childhood. So, in this study we have evaluated the patterns of antibiotic resistance of Escherichia coli in children. As there are different variations in the phenotypic characterization of  the organisms, genotyping methods like pulsed field gel electrophoresis is further used in another part of this study  to monitor the epidemiology of a disease in this area.

Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on 90 E. coli strains isolated from the urine sample of children aged from 1 month to 14 years, with urinary tract infection. Susceptibility of all the isolates to different antibiotics was determined by the disk diffusion method and then the genetic patterns of all the strain were obtained by PFGE and compared with patterns of antibiotic resistance.

Results: Frothy five patterns of drug resistance were recognized among 90 E. coli strains under the study. Ampicilin, cotimoxazol,and tetracycline have the least antimicrobial effects, respectively. Sixty six PFGE profiles were obtained from the genome of E. coli strains by this moreover, genotyping method. The most strains showed thirteen and twelve bands and the patterns with eight or nineteen bands showed  the least percentage.

Conclusion: With regard to high differentiation power of PFGE method in comparison with antibiogram and according to the obtained patterns no epidemic  paterm of uropathogenic E. coli was seen among children in Jahrom.