Frequency/Dysuria syndrome in young women

The frequency/dysuria syndrome in women is a common problem seen in primary medical care. Only half the affected women who consult a physician have a positive urine culture at the standard of 100 000 organisms per millilitre of urine. The other half may have false-negative urine cultures, "low-count bacterial infection", or urethritis. There are no clinical differences between culture-positive and culture-negative groups that would assist identification of women for whom immediate antibiotic treatment is appropriate. A primary-care study of 103 episodes of frequency/dysuria in 101 young women attending a Student Health Service explored the temporal relationship between sexual activity and the development of urinary symptoms. The length of the last coitus-symptom onset interval proved to have no useful value in predicting the outcome of urine culture in this population. A short last coitus-symptom onset interval combined with a short duration of symptoms may reduce the accuracy of low-power microscopic bacteruria as a test for bacterial urinary infection.