Background: Urinary tract infections are common among diabetic patients. High antimicrobial resistance of urinary pathogens against commonly used antimicrobial agents made it very difficult to treat these infections. This analysis was conducted to assess patterns of urinary pathogens among diabetes and nondiabetes patients and to assess their antimicrobial sensitivity patterns against commonly used antibiotics.
Methods: Big diagnostic data of urinary cultures from 56 diagnostic labs across 21 states in India was analyzed to assess patterns of urinary pathogens among diabetic and nondiabetic patients. Diagnosis of diabetes was ascertained by using ADA criteria. Culture positivity rate and overall antimicrobial resistance status are compared between diabetics and nondiabetics.
Results: There were 51,907 urine samples, in which culture and sensitivity test was done. Proportion of diabetics was 24.8%. Culture positivity rate was 15.0% overall. Diabetes patients have statistically significant (p<0.05) high positivity rate (20.3%) in comparison to nondiabetics (13.2%). Urinary isolates (overall) from diabetics have low sensitivity than nondiabetics against common antibiotics. Sensitivity of isolates among diabetics was significantly (p<0.05) low than nondiabetics for amoxicillin, amoxicillin-clavulanic acid, ampicillin, meropenem, imipenem, nitrofurantoin, cotrimoxazole, ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, ampicillin, cefepime, cefixime, cefotaxime, cefuroxime, ceftriaxone and norfloxacin but not for fosfomycin and cotrimoxazole. Overall sensitivity for carbapenems and fosfomycin was >80% among both categories of patients, while it was <80% for all other antibiotics mentioned above.
M. Singh: None. R. Thakur: None.
