Investigation of prevalence and antibiotic resistance pattern of bacteria isolated from urinary tract infections in women referred to Ghaem hospital in Mashhad

Background: Urinary tract infection (UTI) is one of the most commonly problematic bacterial infections, especially among women. Increasing drug resistance requires the determination of an antibiotic resistance pattern for proper treatment. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the prevalence and antibiotic resistance against bacterial agents isolated from urinary tract infections in women referred to Ghaem Hospital, Mashhad, Iran. Materials and Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was performed in 2800 urine samples acquired from outpatient women referred to Ghaem Hospital in Mashhad between 2015 and 2016. Sampling method was as simple random sampling, and data collection method was field sampling. Detection of the bacteria was performed using routine microbiological and biochemical methods. Susceptibility testing was performed using a disk diffusion method (Kirby-Bauer) on the Muller Hinton Agar medium. The results were analyzed using SPSS software version 22, through Chi-square and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. Results: Among 6500 of urine samples, 1155 samples were positive for bacteria. The highest prevalence belonged to Escherichia coli with 640 isolates (55.4%), and the lowest prevalence belonged to Pseudomonas aeruginosa with 35 isolates (3%). The highest resistance was reported against ampicillin (84.2%) and the lowest resistance to ciprofloxacin (27.7%), followed by ampicillin (28.2%). Conclusion: In this study, the antibiotic resistance was high for antibiotics routinely used to treat urinary tract infection. Therefore, due to the rapid increase in antibiotic resistance, an accurate assessment of antibiotic resistance pattern is needed.