1 University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky
THE CAREFUL STUDY of urinary infections in a nursery by Sweet and Wolinsky in this issue raises the question: Are there "pyelopathogenic" strains of E. coli? Various workers have hinted that there are specific strains of this organism which cause pyelonephritis just as E. coli 0111:B4 causes infantile diarrhea. Vahlne, Ewing and Davis Rantz, Kunin and Halmagyi, and Turck et al. all found that the majority of urinary infections in older children and adults were caused by a few serotypes: O groups 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 75 were found by most of these workers to be common urinary isolates.