Bacteriuria of pregnancy. Relation to socioeconomic factors.

ALTHOUGH symptomatic urinary-tract infections are diagnosed frequently during pregnancy, recent reports indicate that a number of pregnant women have bacteriuria that remains asymptomatic and escapes clinical recognition unless quantitative urine cultures are obtained. For example, Kass1 2 3 has shown that 6 to 7 per cent of 4000 pregnant women attending the prenatal clinics of the Boston City Hospital had asymptomatic bacteriuria. Henderson and his co-workers4 found the incidence of unrecognized urinary-tract infections to be 6.5 per cent in pregnant Negro women whereas only 2.5 per cent of white women, presumably of a similar low socioeconomic status, had cryptic bacteriuria. Kaitz . . .