title: Association of Urinary Tract Infection in Married Women Presenting with Urinary Incontinence in a Hospital based Population.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Urinary incontinence (UI) is increasingly recognized as a significant health problem, which remains a hygienic as well as social problem. Women have higher risk of developing incontinence in their lifetime compared with men. Urinary tract infection can increase the incidence of incontinence. Present study was undertaken to assess the association of UTI in married women who presented with UI.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The present study was aimed to identify the patients (married women) with complaints of UI and determining its association with UTI; and to identify the causative organism for the UTI along with its antimicrobial susceptibility pattern.
  
  
  METHODS
  This is a cross-sectional, non-randomized study of 107 married women with UI, who attended outpatient department in our hospital. Mid-stream urine (MSU) samples were collected from these patients with positive history of incontinence. Screening of urine for significant bacteriuria and culture to identify the etiological agents were performed followed by evaluation of their antimicrobial susceptibility profiles using Kirby Bauer disc diffusion method.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Overall 25.2% of patients with incontinence had a positive urine culture. History of UTI was elicited in around 38.3% of patients, among which 15% had positive urine culture and 10.3% of the patients who did not have a history had positive culture. Escherichia coli was the commonest causative organism (66.6) causing UTI, followed by Enterococcus spp. (22.3%), Klebsiella pneumoniae (7.4%) and Proteus mirabilis (3.7%). The antimicrobial susceptibility pattern for Escherichia coli showed high sensitivity to Nitrofurantoin (94.4%) and high resistance to Ampicillin (94.4%).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our study revealed one in every four incontinent patients had UTI and almost half of them suffered from previous episodes of UTI. Thus appropriate correction of the existing UTI can help in the treatment of UI.
authors.affiliation: Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Northern Border University , Northern Borders, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia .
authors.forename: Jayakumar
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Subramaniam
authors.affiliation: Junior Resident, Department of Microbiology, Saveetha Medical College & Hospital , Saveetha Nagar, Thandalam, Kancheepuram District, Chennai, India .
authors.forename: Shilpalakshmiprasad
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Eswara
authors.affiliation: Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology, Christian Medical College , Vellore, India .
authors.forename: Bineshlal
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Yesudhason
keywords: Antibiogram; Escherichia coli; Significant bacteriuria; Urinary Incontinence in women; Urine culture