Molecular study of biofilm formation related to antibiotic resistance of uropathogenic escherichia coli isolated from Urinary Tract Infection (UTI)

In this study, 121 clinical samples were collected from patients suffering from urinary tract infections from hospitals in Babil Governorate, including (Imam Al-Sadiq Teaching Hospital and Mirjan Teaching Hospital) for the period from 10/06/2022 to 10/09/2022. Bacterial isolates were identified by conventional methods and Vitek-2 Compact system, then their diagnosis was confirmed by a molecular method using 16SrRNA gene via polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and 34 clinical isolates of E. coli were obtained. The results of antibiotic susceptibility testing by disk diffusion method showed that uropathogenic E. coli was multidrug resistant (MDR). Among the isolates, 34 (100%) were resistant to Cefepime, Cephalexin and Nitrofurantoin, 31 (91.17%) to Doxycycline, Nalidixic acid and Tetracycline, 29 (85.29%) to Amikacin, 26 (76.47%) to Gentamicin, 20 (58.82%) to Cefixime, 17 (50%) to Norfloxacin and 6 (17.64%) to Imipenem. The results showed that 34 (100%) bacterial isolates formed different degrees of biofilm, 3 (8.82%) bacterial isolates produced strong biofilm and 31 (91.17%) bacterial isolates produced moderate biofilm. In addition, molecular detection of fimH, luxs, mqsR and papAH genes was performed using PCR technology and the results were 67.64%, 100%, 100% and 0%, respectively.