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Researchers found that women with urinary tract infection (UTI), those with noninfectious lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), and control subjects exhibited similar uropathogen levels when evaluated with quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) testing, as published in Clinical Infectious Diseases. They analyzed urine from 502 women: 104 with recurrent UTI and acute symptoms; 354 with noninfectious LUTS; and 44 asymptomatic controls. The qPCR tests detected bacterial DNA in nearly all participants, including E coli in 97.3%, Enterococcus species in 99.2%, Klebsiella pneumoniae in 73.4%, and Candida albicans in 94.2%. However, no qPCR threshold for an individual organism could reliably distinguish UTI from noninfectious LUTS or asymptomatic controls, according to the authors.
Emerging utilization: For urgent care clinicians, the findings suggest that detecting a uropathogen does not necessarily indicate infection. The authors note that qPCR-based technologies are being used increasingly in the clinical evaluation of UTI and advise, “providers should exercise caution when using qPCR-based, culture-independent testing in women without a high suspicion for acute UTI.”