Bacterial interference for prevention of urinary tract infection: an overview

Urinary tract infection (UTI) is the most common infection in patients with spinal cord injury (SCI) and is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in this population. The bladders of patients with SCI, particularly those with indwelling bladder catheters, can become colonized by a variety of organisms, including those that may, and others that may not, cause symptoms of infection. The latter group of bacteria, so-called benign colonizers, are often left untreated because they may provide some protection against symptomatic infection with more pathogenic bacteria. In recent years, deliberate urogenital tract colonization with benign bacterial strains was studied with the objective of offering some protection against invasion by uropathogenic strains. When well-characterized strains of Lactobacillus sp. were used to colonize the vagina of women prone to frequent UTI, a moderate reduction in the rate of recurrent UTI was observed. In other studies, a non-pathogenic prototype of Escherichia coli (strain 83,972) causing asymptomatic bacteriuria was used for deliberate bladder colonization. These preliminary observations encourage the examination of the safety and preventive efficacy of this approach in human subjects.