Investigation of fluoroquinolone resistance in urinary tract infections caused by Escherichia coli

This study aimed to investigate fluoroquinolone resistance in E. coli isolates obtained from patients diagnosed with urinary tract infections in hospitals in Iraq. For this purpose, urine samples were collected from 120 patients. After isolation and identification, it was determined that 20 samples were E. coli. The resistance to norfloxacin, levofloxacin, and ciprofloxacin in these isolates was investigated using VITEK 2. It was found that 66.7% of the resistant isolates were resistant to norfloxacin, 72.5% were resistant to levofloxacin, and 64.2% were resistant to ciprofloxacin. The same isolates showed susceptibility to norfloxacin in 20.8% of cases, to levofloxacin in 20.0% of cases, and to ciprofloxacin in 21.7% of cases. After DNA extraction from the resistant isolates, the presence of gyrA and parC genes responsible for fluoroquinolone resistance and mutations in these genes were investigated through sequencing.