Frequent UTIs

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NHE
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Frequent UTIs

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Do you have frequent UTIs? It could be due to food born bacteria. Certain strains of E. coli common in UTIs have been traced back to meat contaminated from poor slaughterhouse practices. These strains have also been found in contaminated plant products.

Unraveling a hidden cause of UTIs — plus how to prevent them

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-sho ... vent-treat

If you've had a urinary tract infection, you're in good company. About 60% of women will develop one in their lifetime. UTIs lead to more than a million emergency room visits each year and more than $2 billion in medical costs.

Many of these infections are caused by common strains of E. coli bacteria that humans have lived with for millennia. But now researchers are investigating an unsettling source of some of the illness: the meat supply.

UTIs make urinating painful or difficult and can interfere with sex, sleep and exercise. Sometimes they can cause fever or chills. But since they can be treated with antibiotics, they've been considered more of a nuisance than a public health problem. Recently though, multi-drug resistance to some of the bacteria, including strains of E. coli, that cause UTIs has become an increasing worry.

But many of the more than 700 known strains of Escherichia coli are harmless. So the authors of a new study set out to solve a mystery: Which strains cause infections, and where do they come from?

They had a hunch that the U.S. animal agriculture system could be a likely culprit.

Both farm animals and humans have some strains of E. coli bacteria in their guts. When farm animals are slaughtered, the bacteria from their guts can contaminate raw meat, which can in turn contaminate kitchen surfaces during cooking.

A team of researchers spent one year collecting samples of raw meat in Flagstaff, Ariz., to find out if there's an overlap between the strains of E. coli in the meat supply and the strains that can make people sick.

"We sampled all the chicken, turkey and pork from every grocery store in the city twice per month," explains Lance Price, a professor at George Washington University Milken School of Public Health and the founding co-director of the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center.

They also collected urine samples from the Flagstaff Medical Center from people who were hospitalized with UTIs.

In their study, published in the scientific journal One Health, the researchers found that about 8% of UTIs in Flagstaff could be attributed to bacteria from meat. Nationwide, they estimate as many as 640,000 infections each year are caused by foodborne E. coli strains from animals.

"Our study provides compelling evidence that dangerous E. coli strains are making their way from food animals to people through the food supply and making people sick," Price says.

Genomic sleuthing clarifies the link with livestock.

To pin down the connection, the researchers brought both the meat and urine samples back to their laboratory and cultured for E. coli, explains co-author Paul Keim, the executive director of the Pathogen and Microbiome Institute at Northern Arizona University. They performed genomic sequencing to inspect the microbes' DNA.

This helped them identify segments of DNA from the bacteria that are specific to strains from animals, and others that are specific to strains in people. "We started recognizing that, hey, here's these little packages of DNA that are really strongly associated with chicken," Price explains. Others can be strongly associated with pork, and others with people.

"The genomic analysis allowed us to match up a number of different strains," explains Keim.

The degree of overlap between the E. coli strains from meat and those found in samples from patients with UTIs was striking, says Tim Johnson, a professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Minnesota who studies poultry diseases and genomics.

"When I first saw the data, I was pretty overwhelmed at the connectivity," Johnson says, though he says the study falls short of proving that the UTIs were caused by E.coli from meat. He points to the other ways the bacteria can contaminate the food supply. For instance, they can get into irrigation water and contaminate crops.

Big picture, Keim, says, the study shows "there's lots of E. coli strains out there that cause UTIs and you can get them through the food supply."

Stopping human disease may start on the farm.

The researchers plan to continue to trace the connection between the food supply and human UTIs. The study allowed them to create a data platform to which they hope to build on. It's similar to how the FBI developed a database of criminal's DNA fingerprints that they can search to solve crimes, explains Keim. "We didn't have that for E. coli," or for UTIs until doing this study, he says.

This kind of knowledge could lead to new strategies to prevent the spread of bacteria that cause UTIs.

For instance, the study points to two E. coli strains that have particularly high virulence, including the ST131-H22 strain, which has been found in poultry operations. A previous study showed this strain may be a vehicle for human infection.

It turns out this strain is also causing disease in birds in poultry operations, so Johnson says some farmers vaccinate their flocks against it. "They use what's called an autogenous vaccine," Johnson explains. Those are customized for the flock from strains of bacteria isolated from animals in the flock. He says a better understanding of the overlap between human disease and animal disease, can help farmers take proactive prevention steps.

"If you're finding a problematic strain that's killing chickens or turkey, that could also be a food safety threat, they can make vaccines against those strains to try to eliminate them from the barns," Johnson says.

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David1949
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Re: Frequent UTIs

Post by David1949 »

I have frequent UTIs. I was hospitalized twice in the past year because of UTI. Both times my family doctor prescribed antibiotics. The next day I was so weak I couldn't get up off the floor. Ended up in the hospital for about 2 weeks both times.

Recently a link was discovered between certain gut bacteria and Parkinsons https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articl ... in-the-gut.

I wonder if there is a link to MS.
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NHE
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Re: Frequent UTIs

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David1949 wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2023 12:28 pm Recently a link was discovered between certain gut bacteria and Parkinsons https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articl ... in-the-gut.

I wonder if there is a link to MS.
You may be interested in reading my posts on the brain's microbiome.

viewtopic.php?t=32313

The photo depicts bacteria situated near the blood brain barrier. Get the wrong bacteria in there and ask...”What could go wrong?”
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jimmylegs
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Re: Frequent UTIs

Post by jimmylegs »

Hi David, are you able to monitor your copper zinc ratio?

Serum copper-to-zinc-ratio and risk of incident infection in men: the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study
https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 20-00644-1

"The optimum of the serum Cu/Zn-ratio lies between 0.7 and 1.0 [25], and also in our study the risk started to increase after the ratio exceeded 1.0 (Fig. 1). An increased serum Cu/Zn-ratio has been suggested as a valuable clinical marker in several case–control studies with bacterial, viral and parasitic infections [26,27,28], and in cohort studies with risk of all-cause, cancer, cardiovascular or HIV-1 mortality [11, 12, 15, 29]. Elderly are more susceptible to infections than younger people, and infections are an important cause not only for morbidity and mortality but also for hospital-admissions in elderly individuals [30]. Partly, this is due to the age-related weakening of the immune system (immunosenescence) [31].
...
In the present study the most common infection was pneumonia. I... In general, urinary tract infections (UTI) are the most common infections of the elderly [46].
...
In conclusion, our data suggest that a higher serum Cu/Zn-ratio is associated with increased risk of incident infection in middle-aged and older men. ..."

hopefully something in there is helpful!
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