ABSTRACT

Background: Unhygienic public washrooms are potential reservoirs of urinary tract infection (UTI)- causing pathogens. Recently, there is a surge of non-medical grade toilet seat sanitizers that claim to protect against UTIs. This work, a first of its kind, was done keeping in mind public health interests, as UTI is very common among women and children. Objective: To study the susceptibility of common uropathogens to toilet seat sanitizers, and determination of their antibiogram. Materials and methods: Toilet seat washes from ladies’ public washrooms of a major railway terminal station, a tertiary care hospital, and a shopping mall were collected before and after spraying sanitizers. Each wash was cultured on nutrient agar for total heterotrophic count (THC), followed by cultivation on selective media to confirm the presence of the common uropathogens by standard microbiological and biochemical procedures. A comparative contamination analysis was made, and respective efficacies of sanitizers determined. The susceptibilities of the uropathogen isolates to some common and some lesser-used antibiotics was also studied. Results and Discussion: There was a significant reduction in THC on applying the toilet seat sanitizers, from which the relative efficacies of the sprays tested was calculated and compared. Several notorious uropathogens of public health concern were isolated from the toilet seat washes, among which E. coli showed multi-drug resistance towards three common antibiotics. Conclusion: This makes this novel study clinically significant, showing the prevalence of antibiotic resistance in natural uropathogen isolates, which should strictly be avoided in treating UTIs that occur despite using sanitizers as preventive measures. Keywords: Antibiogram, Toilet Seat Sanitizers, Uropathogens, Urinary Tract Infection
Publication date: 01/09/2020

https://ijbpas.com/pdf/2020/September/MS_IJBPAS_2020_5178.pdf

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https://doi.org/10.31032/IJBPAS/2020/9.9.5178