Authors
Hogins, J., Mekala, S., Resendiz, J. A., Nelapolu, A., Papp, S., Zimmern, P. E., Reitzer, L.
Abstract
At least half of all women will experience a urinary tract infection (UTI) in their lifetime. Age, sexual activity, hormonal status, and the urinary tract microbiome (urobiome) contribute to the probability of infection. While studies have assessed urobiome composition during and after infection, no study has tracked the daily and weekly fluctuations of healthy urobiomes to determine urobiome stability. In this study, we sampled the clean catch urine of 3 women with no history of UTIs over the span of two weeks sampling three times a day on two days each week to track urobiome changes, and whether the urobiome in individuals with no UTI history resembles that of individuals after a UTI. Two participants were dominantly colonized by Lactobacillus while the third had a more diverse set of taxa albeit at a lower total amount of bacteria. We previously reported that the urine from only one of the less diverse urobiomes supported the growth of recently isolated uropathogenic Escherichia coli or Enterococcus faecalis, while the other two participants urines did not support growth. We conclude that 1) urobiomes exist in healthy post-menopausal women 2) these urobiomes have a stable and robust community structure and 3) a combination of colonization resistance, including nutrient limitation, and urobiome structure contributes to resistance to UTIs.
Preprint server:
bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 06 Nov 2025.
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