The Urology Care Foundation reports at least 10 in 25 women and 3 in 25 men will have symptoms of a UTI during their lifetime. A UTI happens when you get an infection in your urinary tract. Most UTIs are not serious, but some can lead to serious problems like kidney infections. The most common treatment for a UTI is antibiotics. Another notewarthy stat is that UTIs lead to more than a million emergency room visits each year. Doctors say that Many of these infections are caused by common strains of E. coli bacteria that humans have lived with for millennia. But now researchers are investigating the relationship of eating meat and how diet is contributing to the prevalance of UTIs.
UTIs make urinating painful and can spread to the kidneys and also bring on fever and chills. Doctors say discovering the source of the infection in repeated cases is important.
Drinking a lot of water is the best way to handle a UTI according to ABC Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton who shares her top tips. "The solution to pollution is dilution.The more fluid the better. Plain water to flush out bacteria.
But many of the more than 700 known strains of Escherichia coli are harmless. So the authors of a new study set out to solve a mystery: Which strains cause infections, and where do they come from?
NPR.org found some facinating data. "Both farm animals and humans have some strains of E. coli bacteria in their guts. When farm animals are slaughtered, the bacteria from their guts can contaminate raw meat, which can in turn contaminate kitchen surfaces during cooking.
A team of researchers spent one year collecting samples of raw meat in Flagstaff, Ariz., to find out if there's an overlap between the strains of E. coli in the meat supply and the strains that can make people sick.
"We sampled all the chicken, turkey and pork from every grocery store in the city twice per month," explains Lance Price, a professor at George Washington University Milken School of Public Health and the founding co-director of the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center.
They also collected urine samples from the Flagstaff Medical Center from people who were hospitalized with UTIs.
In their study, published in the scientific journal One Health, the researchers found that about 8% of UTIs in Flagstaff could be attributed to bacteria from meat. Nationwide, they estimate as many as 640,000 infections each year are caused by foodborne E. coli strains from animals."