Antimicrobial resistance patterns of urinary tract pathogens in young children from Gorgan, Northern Iran

The antibiotic resistance or susceptibility patterns of common bacterial pathogens vary between geographical regions. We investigated the antibiotic resistance pattern of common uropathogens in a population of young children. In this cross-sectional retrospective study, children suspected of having urinary tract infection (UTI) that were referred to Taleghani Pediatric Hospital from March 2009 until March 2010 were included. Urine cultures were performed before initiation of antibiotics. Demographic information and results of cultures and antibiograms were obtained from the laboratory archive. Cultures with colony count >= 10(5) cfu/ml in midstream urine samples or any colony count in the suprapubic samples were considered to be positive. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed using the Kirby Bauer disc diffusion method. We evaluated 7844 urine cultures of which 153 (2%) were obtained from supra-pubic aspiration route. 3839 (48.9%) were male. In total, 533 (6.8%) of cultures were positive (64.2% were female). E. coli was the most common organism in positive samples in both sexes, but it was significantly more common in the females than males (83.3% vs. 75.4%, P < 0.05). E. coli showed the highest percentage of resistance to ampicillin (84.1%) and the lowest resistance to amikacin (11%). We found that E. coli was the predominant bacterial pathogen and that the antimicrobial resistance patterns of the different uropathogens were highly variable, emphasizing the importance of continuous surveillance of trends in resistance patterns of uropathogens.