Why Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) survey?

 

Urinary Tract Infection (UTIs) is among the biggest public health concern affecting nearly 150 million people each year worldwide. These infections are often caused through range of pathogens like Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumonia, Proteus mirabilis, Enterococcus faecalis and Staphylococcus saprophyticus with various characteristic symptoms. Treatment of these infections becomes more challenging in the presence of risk factors such as higher age, comorbidity, and immunosupression. Moreover high resurgence rates and rise of antimicrobial resistance among uropathogens have engraved the economic, social and emotional burden of these infections leaving resort to shift of focus on development of better diagnostics from just only curing drugs.

The gold standard for the diagnosis of a urinary tract infection is the detection of the pathogen in the presence of clinical symptoms. The pathogen is detected and identified by urine culture (using midstream urine). This also allows an estimate of the level of the bacteriuria and according to the minimum level of bacteriuria demonstrating an infection, UTI is determined. However, due to lack of awareness and social taboo, the treatment is delayed to the patient till advance stages of infection. Therefore, prior information of the symptoms and simple diagnostic tools will significantly enrich the treatment strategy against UTI.

In this age of Information technology and Web, Online tools play an important role in Health care. Online tool or information portal that can provide patient information about UTI will be an asset in deciding whether to consult doctor on not? Therefore, present survey is to model various symptoms of UTI to that of disease. The survey form consists of 27 questions based on different header viz. 3 questions based on basic personal details, 15 questions based on risk factors that may increase susceptibility towards UTI, 8 questions based on symptoms and 2 questions based on diagnostic results.

The survey form is to be filled by both UTI patients at the time of infection and healthy individual so to develop algorithm that can discriminate between UTI Vs Healthy.

The survey form can be accessed from: http://survey.e-bioinformatics.net/surveyform/

Reference

  1. Flores-Mireles, A. L., Walker, J. N., Caparon, M. and Hultgren S. J. (2015). Urinary tract infections: epidemiology, mechanisms of infection and treatment options, Nature Reviews Microbiology 13(5): 269–284.
  2. Eshwarappa, M., Dosegowda, R., Aprameya, I. V., Khan, M. W., Kumar, P. S., and Kempegowda P. (2011). Clinico-microbiological profile of urinary tract infection in south India, Indian Journal of Nephrology 21(1): 30–36.
  3. Schmiemann, G., Kniehl, E., Gebhardt, K., Matejczyk, M. M., and Hummers-Pradier, E. (2010). The Diagnosis of Urinary Tract Infection, Deutsches Ärzteblatt International 107(21): 361–367.

Note: 5 Lucky participants will get Amazon surprise gift voucher so Happy Survey!