[Determination of the level of urinary tract infection in children by antibodies coating bacteria from urinary sediment].

The article deals with the evaluation of the significance of surface antibodies in urinary sediment bacteria by direct immunofluorescence in children with urinary tract infection caused by Escherichia coli (E. coli), so as of determination of location of the infection. Sixty five children were studied, aged from 1 to 16.5 years. Based on the recognized criteria in literature, all patients were classified into three groups: chronic pyelonephritis (CP)--10 patients, acute pyelonephritis (AP)--34 patients, and lower urinary tract infections (LUTI)--21 patients. On the basis of the analysis of the relationship among the three groups of patients in relation to the absence or various presence rates (up to 5%, 6-10% and 11-15% respectively) of fluorescent antibodies in urine sediment, and using the Fischer's test of absolute probability, we obtained a highly significant difference (p = 0.00006) only between the groups AP and LUTI. This difference caused the presence of fluorescence in the AP group and its absence in the LUTI group. By adding the positive fluorescence findings we found that it was present in 80% of CP patients, in 91.17% of AP patients, and in 14.28% of LUTI patients. chi2 test showed a highly significant difference (chi2 = 34.79; p < 0.01), which confirmed that bacterial fluorescence was most often present in the urine of AP patients and absent in LUTI patients. Bacterial fluorescence was significantly more frequent in CP patients in relation to LUTI patients. These results indicate that the method for detecting surface antibodies in urine bacteria, aimed at determinig the location of infection, is more reliable and noninvasive as compared to other methods.