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Bladder infections caused by E. coli, a common bacterium, return in as many as 30% of women apparently cured by antibiotics. Until now, the reason was not always clear. Bacteria may be able to survive antibiotic treatment for bladder infections by reverting to an inactive state.
According to the researcher's laboratory experiments, the number of bacteria reproducing dropped to zero within several days of antibiotic treatment.
Not all the bacteria were killed, though. The test showed that about 3% of the bacteria were still present in a dormant state after treatment with ciprofloxacin and about 7% lingered after treatment with trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole.
Even after a month of antibiotic exposure, 10 million of the original 1 billion bacteria remained.
The investigators conclude that antibiotic treatment does not successfully kill all the bacteria participating in the infection and may, in fact, encourage many of the bacteria to persist in a resting state.
Current treatments for bladder infections, they suggest, may, therefore, not be adequate and this phenomenon may account for many of the repeat infections.
101st meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Orlando, Florida May 29, 2001
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