LAUSR

This is a prospective study that reports the prevalence of urinary tract infections (UTIs) and the bacteriological causative agents among pregnant women attending antenatal clinics at a secondary care hospital in Ile-Ife, southwestern Nigeria. In total, 335 midstream clean-catch urine samples were collected from pregnant women between April and July 2017. These were cultured for the presence of bacterial pathogens. All the isolates were subjected to antibiotic sensitivity testing on Mueller Hinton agar by a modified Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion technique using CLSI guidelines. Data were analyzed using SPSS for Windows version 16 and WHONET 5. A total of 190 showed significant bacterial growth while 145 showed no significant bacterial growth. Bacterial agents isolated included Klebsiella spp. showing the highest occurrence of 60 (31.5%), followed by Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus with prevalences of 49 (25.7%) and 32 (16.8%), respectively. Other organisms implicated are Proteus mirabilis (20 [10.5%]), coagulase-negative staphylococci (24 [12.3%]), and Pseudomonas aeruginosa with the least prevalence (5 [2.6%]). They have a resistance to antibiotics such as amoxycillin (64%), gentamicin (52.6%), erythromycin (62.5%), ceftazidime (69%), cefotaxime (74%), and ceftriaxone (79.6%) but a high sensitivity to tetracycline (88.5%), nitrofurantoin (96.3%), and imipenem (100%), respectively. This study indicated a high prevalence of UTIs (56.7%) in pregnant women, though most of them showed no clinical manifestation.