**1. Introduction**

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are one of the most common health problems plaguing women. About half of women will experience a UTI during their lifetime. The incidence is much lower in men but increases with age. In patients over the age of 65, at least 20% of women and 10% of men have bacteruria [1]. The incidence also increases with hospitalization or institutional‐ ization. UTIs are the most common nosocomial infection, and more than 80% of these are associated with an indwelling catheter [2]. There is also a higher risk of UTIS in pregnancy and some chronic diseases including diabetes, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries or disease, and immunosuppressive diseases such as HIV.

The cost of treating UTIs is substantial both in inpatient and outpatient settings. In the United States in the year 2007, approximately 2.47 billion dollars were spent on outpatient treatment of UTI and this excluded spending on prescriptions [3]. The estimated cost of nosocomial UTIS is approximately 2.66 billion dollars in 2007 dollars [4]. There are simple and effective measures for prevention of UTIs which can significantly limit morbidity and cost, but these are often overlooked,

Certain patients, particularly women, despite having normal anatomy and function of the urinary tract, are genetically predisposed to urinary tract infections. This tendency seems to be related to variations in the urinary tract epithelium and it's interaction with bacteria. Once a person has a UTI, he or she is more likely to get another within a year. Recurrence rates in women vary from 28 to 82%, with higher rates seen in women with a prior history of UTI [5]. The risk of recurrent UTIs increases with higher number of prior infections. It also decreases with a longer time interval between the first and second infections. [4] However, even with long intervals between infections, about one sixth of women have difficulties with recurrent infections throughout their lifetime [4]. Preventive strategies should be targeted to this group.

© 2013 Kammire; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
