Virulence Factors Associated With Escherichia coli Bacteremia and Urinary Tract Infection

Extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli (ExPEC) causes various infections, including urinary tract infection (UTI), sepsis, and neonatal meningitis. ExPEC strains have virulence factors (VFs) that facilitate infection by allowing bacterial cells to migrate into and multiply within the host. We compared the microbiological characteristics of ExPEC isolates from blood and urine specimens from UTI patients.

We conducted a single-center, prospective study in an 855-bed tertiary-care hospital in Korea. We consecutively recruited 80 hospitalized UTI patients with E. coli isolates, which were isolated from blood and/or urine, and urine alone between March 2019 and May 2020. We evaluated the 80 E. coli isolates for the presence of bacterial genes encoding the sequence types (STs), antimicrobial resistance, and VFs using whole-genome sequencing (WGS).

We found no significant differences in STs, antimicrobial resistance patterns, or VFs between isolates from blood and urine specimens. ST131, a pandemic multidrug-resistant clone present in both blood and urine, was the most frequent ST (N=19/80, 24%), and ST131 isolates carried more virulence genes, especially, tsh and espC, than non-ST131 isolates. The virulence scores of the ST131 group and the ST69, ST95, and ST1193 groups differed significantly (P<0.05).

We found no STs and VFs associated with bacteremia in WGS data of E. coli isolates from UTI patients. ST131 was the most frequent ST among UTI causing isolates and carried more VF genes than non-ST131 isolates.