Molecular diagnosis of gram negative bacteria in urinary tract infections

ABSTRACT

Urinary tract infections and their complications cause serious health problems affecting millions of people every year. Infections of the urinary tract are the second most common type of infection in the body. About 20% of women are especially prone to UTIs for reasons that are not yet well understood. UTIs in men are not as common as in women but can be very serious when they do occur. Accurate identification of bacterial isolates is an essential task of the clinical microbiology laboratory. Conventional identification methods of these infections lack the precision and the reproducibility, as well as they are time consuming because they rely on the growth of the bacteria. Some groups need days or even weeks to grow. Soon after the DNA becomes the worldwide common language, in this study, we compared the conventional microbiological diagnostic methods with the molecular based techniques. Our main focus was targeted to the PCR and sequencing of ribosomal markers. Our candidate in this study was 16S rRNA gene using different primer sets specifically designed to amplify different regions of our marker. We also focused on how much sequencing information is needed for blind identification of bacterial pathogens. In conclusion, the DNA sequencing based method provides a valuable tool for cheap and accurate diagnosis of Gram-negative bacteria in urinary tract infections which can be applicable in other infections