Prevalence and Antimicrobial Susceptibility of Gram-negative Bacteria in Pediatric Patients with Urinary Tract Infections in Baghdad Hospitals, Iraq

Abstract

Children commonly have a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI). To reduce the diseaserelatedto this condition, children need quick diagnosis and suitable treatment. In the present study, out of 336 samples, 122 (36.31%) were positive togrow pathogenic strains, while 214 (63.69%) were negative. Also it was found that the most of positive cultures of uropathogens were detected among female's patients (41.79%). According to the age group, the present study revealed that the age group (1-5 years) was included the highest prevalence (37.71%) followed by the group (<1year) (30.33%). Among the 122 pathogenic isolates, 91 (74.6%) were Gram-negative, 31 (25.5%) were Gram-positive. The studied data revealed that Escherichiacoli(43.95%)was the commonly isolated bacterium, followed by  Proteus mirabilis (28.6%), Klebsiellapneumoniae (13.2%), Enterobacter cloacae (5.5%),Acinetobacterbaumannii (4.4%), Pseudomonas aeruginosa(4.4%).With reference to gender, the gram negative uropathogenic bacteria for women and men were 60 (65.9%) and 31 (34.1%), respectively. The results demonstrated that all gram-negative bacterial isolates exhibited a high resistance to Ampicillin (90.1% ) and Cefotaxime (80.2%), while the lower resistance showed with Tigecycline (5.5%), Amikacin (15.4%), Ciprofloxacin (27.5%), Trimethoprime/sulphomethoxizole (27.5%), Levofloxacin (31.9%), Meropenem (36.2%) and Tetracycline (37.4%), which mean that Tigecycline was the effective antibiotic against the local gram-negative bacteria isolated from pediatric patients. In our study, drug resistance in these pathogens is associated to the commonlytaken antibiotics which is a troublesome finding, compromising therapeutic options in the clinical practice and lead to the use of agents with fewer effects against bacteria.