The aim of the study, based on the Department of Microbiology and Bacteriology of the Croatian National Institute of Public Health (Zagreb, Croatia), was to determine the frequency of detection of Ureaplasma urealyticum and Ureaplasma parvum in clinically healthy women of childbearing age and patients with symptoms of the urogenital tract, as well as the determination of antibiotic sensitivity of isolated strains of ureaplasmas.

The study included 424 women in whom ureaplasmas were isolated by culture, among 1370 patients examined who consulted a gynecologist in 2010. Each patient received smears of the cervical canal and the urethra and a real-time PCR study and molecular typing were performed..

Ureaplasma spp. was revealed during culture in 424 patients (34.4%), of whom 79% had clinical symptoms and 21% of those examined had no symptoms (clinically healthy women). Among the patients with ureaplasma, 121 women (28.5%) were pregnant. Genotyping was successfully performed for 244 strains, and most of them were identified as U. parvum (92.6%). Of the genotypically identified isolates, 79.5% were isolated from patients with symptoms and 20.5% from women without clinical symptoms; 29.9% of the strains were isolated from pregnant women and 70.1% from non-pregnant patients.

A study of the antibiotic sensitivity of 424 strains isolated from ureaplasma showed that all the strains were sensitive to macrolides and tetracyclines. At the same time, it turned out that the sensitivity to fluoroquinolones is low - only 42.9% and 24.5% of the strains were sensitive to ofloxacin and ciprofloxacin, respectively.

Thus, this study demonstrated that U. parvum is the most frequently excreted ureaplasma (92.6%). As far as sensitivity to antibiotics is concerned, fluoroquinolones should not be considered as drugs to treat ureaplasma infection, while macrolides and tetracyclines continue to be effective.