The study of drug resistance and esbl production in escherichia coli causing urinary tract infections

Urinary tract infection is one of the most common cause of bacterial infections and Escherichia coli is the predominant urinary pathogen isolated from community based and hospitalized patients.1,2 The treatment has been posing as a challenge due to the emergence of multidrug resistant E .coli especially in nosocomial infections, Extended Spectrum β-lactamases (ESBL) bearing the major brunt of the problem limiting the therapeutic options.3 The present study was carried out to determine the antimicrobial susceptibility pattern and to detect ESBL production in E. coli causing Urinary tract infections. Total of 100 E.coli isolates from clinically suspected UTI cases from patients attending Victoria hospital & Vani Vilas hospital attached to BMC & RI, Bangalore were studied from October 2010 to September 2012. Mid stream urine samples were collected after taking informed consent from all patients and were processed. All samples were cultured by semi quantitative method. The identification of E.coli was done using standard biochemical tests. E.coli thus identified were studied for the drug resistance patterns. The isolates were further screened for ESBL production by disc diffusion method and confirmed by phenotypic confirmatory method. Considering high morbidity and poor clinical response to serious infections in UTI the occurrence of drug resistance and ESBL production in Uropathogenic E.coli (UPEC) strains strengthens the association with pathogenecity. Hence the screening using above mentioned simple methods can be routinely done in clinical laboratory.