Phone calls in the night are a surefire way to set my heart racing. Death, destruction...or a patient with a urinary tract infection? I try to be understanding at 2 a.m., and heaven knows I do understand the agony of dysuria, that urgent, can't-be-quenched, fire of an infected bladder that sends a woman back and forth to the bathroom. And all too often, the middle-of-the-night episode is just one in a series of pesky infections.
What's up with recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs)? Similarly plagued St. Louis rodents are providing clues as to why some UTIs are so hard to beat.
Washington University researchers induced UTIs in a group of volunteered rodents down at the lab. The rest reads like a science fiction story.
As expected, the
e. coli bacteria invaded the epithelial cells lining the mousy bladders. Once inside the cells, the microbes set up housekeeping, forming a "biofilm" around themselves and their offspring. This protein shell protected them against attack from both antibiotics and the mouse's immune system. The growing colonies of bacteria, encased in their armor of protein, formed pods that pooched out from the bladder wall into the cavity of the bladder. Occasionally, the pods ruptured and spilled bacteria into the urine, thus creating another round of midnight misery for the mice. The Washington investigators theorize that if humans also experience attacks from the bacterial pod people, this would explain the recurrence of some UTIs after treatment.
And why my phone rings in the wee hours of the day.
What's up with recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs)? Similarly plagued St. Louis rodents are providing clues as to why some UTIs are so hard to beat.
Washington University researchers induced UTIs in a group of volunteered rodents down at the lab. The rest reads like a science fiction story.
As expected, the e. coli bacteria invaded the epithelial cells lining the mousy bladders. Once inside the cells, the microbes set up housekeeping, forming a "biofilm" around themselves and their offspring. This protein shell protected them against attack from both antibiotics and the mouse's immune system. The growing colonies of bacteria, encased in their armor of protein, formed pods that pooched out from the bladder wall into the cavity of the bladder. Occasionally, the pods ruptured and spilled bacteria into the urine, thus creating another round of midnight misery for the mice. The Washington investigators theorize that if humans also experience attacks from the bacterial pod people, this would explain the recurrence of some UTIs after treatment.
And why my phone rings in the wee hours of the day.