[Bacterial adhesion to buccal epithelial cells as a permanent indicator of recurrent urinary tract infections]

Adhesion of a 3H-thymidine-labeled reference strain of enterococci to epithelial cells of buccal mucosa from 20 young female patients with rec. UTI (aged 3 to 15 years) and 19 urologically healthy girls was investigated. Bacterial attachment in children with rec. UTI was significantly higher statistically than in the healthy control group and did not show any alteration when tested separately during acute UTI (14 cases) and infection-free intervals (17 cases). There was no difference in adherence between patients with rec. UTI connected with diverse anomalies of the urinary tract (12 girls) and UTI patients without anomalies (8 girls). Within the patient group 3 cases under antimicrobial prophylaxis with co-trimoxazole showed bacterial adhesion similar to that in healthy controls. Our examination results lead to the assumption that attachment of enterococci to buccal epithelial cells can be used as a diagnostic criterion for rec. UTI.