[Sensitivity to antibiotics of Escherichia coli strains isolated from children admitted to the "Sf. Ioan" clinical emergency hospital for children in Galaţi during 2005-2006].

The urinary tract infections (UTI) in children represent an important problem both because of their frequency, particularly in small children, and because of the morbidity they generate, sometimes on a long term. Escherichia coli represents the etiologic cause of 80% of these urinary infections. In 2005, 66 E. coli strains were analyzed and, in 2006, 69 E. coli strains were analyzed, coming from significantly positive urocultures > 10(5) UFC/ml. The E. coli strains were identified by the morphologic, culture and biochemical characters. The testing of the sensitivity to antibiotics was performed by the disk-diffusimetry method on Mueller-Hinton agar, and the reading was done visually, according to standards recommended by the suppliers of antibiotics disks. The results were as follows: Sensitivity to antibiotics, even though it was only tested for two years, has recorded slight decreases for some of the antibiotics (beta-lactams simple or in association with beta-lactamase inhibitors). This situation is probably due to a wrong treatment with these drugs, which made E. coli acquire the resistance characters. For cephalosporins, a decrease in the sensitivity was noticed above all for cephalosporins in generations 1 and 2, leaving those in generation 3 with an increased sensitivity. An important decrease was also recorded for the combination trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. Still, some urinary strains of E. coli remain sensitive to drugs such as: colistin, aminoglycosides, cephalosporins (particularly the third generation), fosfomycin, imipenem and the fluoroquinolones.