Understanding why women are more prone to contracting urinary tract infection
As Dr. Cletus Georges continues with his series of blogs, this entry again attempts to make everyone more familiar with urology concerns. In this article, Dr. Georges explains why women are more prone to contracting urinary tract infections than men.
Urinary tract infection, or UTI, is often recognized for the pain that it causes. It is known to cause a burning sensation on the urinary tract, which can really give a person a truly horrific experience. Other symptoms include urinating too frequently or feeling the need to urinate often.
It has also been observed that this happens more commonly in women than in men, shares Dr. Cletus Georges. But why is this so?
This has a lot to do with a woman’s anatomy. The organism known to cause UTI is a bacteria named Escherichia coli, which naturally occurs in the gastrointestinal tract. In other words, the bacteria that comes from your gut somehow finds its way to your urinary tract.
If you look at a woman’s anatomy, she is clearly at a disadvantage because the bacteria from the gut makes it all the way to the outside of the anus, which is literally next to the vagina, where the urinary tract can be accessed.
A man stands a better chance against contracting UTI because this incidental anatomical attribute is not found in males. Quite literally, the bacteria have a much slimmer chance of making their way from the anus to the penis.
You can look forward to more information on urology in a future blog.
Urologist Dr. Cletus Georges attended Cornell University Medical College and graduated in 1991. He completed his residency in Urology at Northwestern University McGaw Medical Center in 1997. For more about what he does, visit this page.
