Epidemiology and Antimicrobial Susceptibility Pattern of Uropathogens in Patients with the Community- and Hospital-Acquired Urinary Tract Infections at a Tertiary Hospital in Somalia

Background: Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are the most common infections in the community and in hospitalized patients. Objectives: To investigate the epidemiology and antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of uropathogens and determine the appro-priate empirical antibiotics to treat UTIs in the community and hospitalized patients. Methods: A total of 2,485 urine cultures were performed at Mogadishu Somali Turkish Training and Research Hospital. Through the standard Kirby-Bauer disk di usion method and commercial disks, antimicrobial sensitivity and resistance were studied based on the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) system using Mueller-Hinton agar. The identification of the microorganisms was done using eosin methylene blue agar and blood agar. Results: Escherichia coli was the most predominant pathogen (63.4%) in all age groups, both genders, and in the community and hospital-acquired UTIs, followed by Klebsiella pneumonia (13.3%). Ceftriaxone, trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, ampicillin, cefurox-ime, and cefixime revealed the highest resistance level (82-100%) against uropathogens. Ciprofloxacin (67.7%) and levofloxacin (54.2%) showed increasing resistance rates against uropathogens. Tigecycline, colimycin, vancomycin, and teicoplanin exhibited the most powerful sensitivity rate (100%). Moreover, fosfomycin, nitrofurantoin, and amikacin manifested a significant sensitivity rate ranging from 86% - 95%. Acinetobacter baumannii was the most prevalent pathogen that belonged to multidrug- and extensively drug-resistant patterns in 69.1% of the samples. Escherichia coli and K. pneumonia showed similar multidrug-resistant patterns in 35.2% of the cases. Conclusions: The results indicated increased trends of antimicrobial resistance rate in trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole (85.1%) and fluoroquinolones (61%) against E. coli that was higher than the recommended local resistance rate for empirical therapy (< 20% and < 10%, respectively). According to the results, using fosfomycin and nitrofurantoin are suggested for UTI empiric treatment, and other antibiotics should be prescribed carefully.