Asymptomatic urinary tract infections and associated risk factors in Pakistani Muslim type 2 diabetic patients

One of the leading long-term complications of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) includes renal dysfunction and urinary tract infections (UTI) which are considered to be prevalent in uncontrolled diabetes. Moreover, physiological factors like age, gender, duration of diabetes, other diabetic complications like neuropathy, autonomic neuropathy and glycosuria are also considered as predisposing factors for increased prevalence of UTI in diabetes which can be symptomatic or asymptomatic.

This was a cross-sectional, multi-centre study including diabetic patients from 12 clinical sites spread across major cities of Pakistan. The inclusion criteria were adult Pakistani population of age between 18 to 75 years both genders and suffering from T2DM irrespective of duration. A detailed clinical history of the past 3 months was recorded and, biochemical investigations of blood samples were conducted. Urine culture analysis performed identified the type of pathogen present and was done only for asymptomatic patients.

A total of 745 type 2 diabetic patients were initially screened, out of 545 patients considered for final analysis 501 (91.92%) were negative and the rest 44 (8.08%) had positive urine culture. Female gender had a significantly higher proportion of positive urine culture (77.27%, p-value< 0.001). Body mass index and mean age had insignificant distribution among the two groups of positive and negative urine culture, with age 40-59 years having higher proportion (70.45%) in the positive group. Escherichia coli was detected in most of the positive samples (52.3%). All bacterial samples were found resistant to Ciprofloxacin.

Diabetic Pakistani muslim female patients are identified to be at high risk of suffering from asymptomatic UTI and age more than 40 years is an important risk factor. Escherichia coli was the most common causative organism among people living in this geographical area.