The prevalence and sensitivity pattern of urinary pathogens from 1240 patients in Port-harcourt, Nigeria was investigated. The predominant pathogens cultured was
E. coli which accounted for 76.6% of the infections.
Klebsiella
spp was responsible for 8.1% of cases while the rest were accounted for by Proteus spp(4.8%), coagulase-negative staphylococci (3.2%),
Pseudomonas
Pseudomonas spp(2.4%),
Enterobacter
spp. (2.4%),
Staphylococcus aureus
(1.6%) and
Citrobacter
species(0.8%). The majority of the isolates were resistant to tetracycline (75.8%), ampicillin (71.0%) and cotrimoxazole (65.3%) but exhibited good sensitivity to nitrofurantoin (88.7%), gentamicin (85.5%) and nalidixic acid (76.6%). It is recommended that a periodic reassessment of the sensitivity pattern of urinary pathogens be carried out to serve as a guide for antibiotic therapy of UTIs in a particular environment since these organisms exhibited resistance to first-line drugs used for UTI infections.
