New treatment for urinary infections

Mon Apr 18, 2011 11:25AM

Probiotic bacteria could be used in the prevention and treatment of recurrent urinary tract infections (UTI) in women, a new study suggests.

Recurrent UTIs, also known as chronic UTIs, are defined as having at least two infections in six months, or three infections in a year.

The common annoying and painful condition frequently recur, affecting 2 to 3 percent of all women and about 20 percent of those women who have experienced a UTI.

A depletion of vaginal lactobacilli, a type of bacteria, is associated with UTI risk, which suggests that replenishing these bacteria may be beneficial.

Researchers at the University of Washington treated 100 women with recurrent UTIs with antibiotics and then randomly assigned them to a Lactobacillus crispatus vaginal suppository probiotic, called LACTIN-V or an inactive placebo.

Probiotics are live microorganisms that thought to be beneficial to the host organism.

During the study, the participants received either the complementary probiotic treatment or the placebo for five days, then once a week for 10 weeks.

The findings showed that only seven of 50 women who received a probiotic to restore the naturally occurring bacteria experienced a recurrence of UTIs over a 10-week period, compared with 13 of 50 women who received a placebo, researchers wrote in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The study shows that replacing the Lactobacillus in women with recurrent UTIs could normalize the vagina and prevent infections, Dr Ann Stapleton and her colleagues concluded.

Although the results are promising, they are not powerful enough to provide a definitive conclusion, said researchers, expressing hope that more definitive studies can be done in future to support their findings.

SJM/AKM