Stinky Urine and Urinary Tract Infection Symptoms
Updated October 30, 2014.
How can you tell if your child has a urinary tract infection?
Older preschool and school age children, often have classic symptoms, such as painful urination, urinating more frequently, having accidents, abdominal pain, fever, or having urine that is cloudy or has an unusual smell.
Unfortunately, it can sometimes be harder to detect urinary tract symptoms in younger infants and toddlers as they can have different symptoms, are usually not potty trained, so don't have accidents, and may not be able to communicate the specific symptoms that they are having.
So instead of painful urination, a younger child might just be irritable. Other non-specific symptoms might include having a fever without a source to explain it and foul-smelling urine.
A new study that will appear in the May issue of Pediatrics, "Association of Malodorous Urine With Urinary Tract Infection in Children Aged 1 to 36 Months," looked to see if foul-smelling urine could be linked to a positive urine culture result and predict a diagnosis of a urinary tract infection.
While the researchers did show "that parental reporting of malodorous urine was associated with UTI in young children," they also found that:
So while 57 percent of children with UTI had foul-smelling urine, indicating that stinky urine is linked to urinary tract infections, the researchers concluded that "it does not have a sufficiently high specificity or sensitivity to definitely rule in or out a diagnosis of UTI."
So basically, your pediatrician can't diagnose a UTI based just on that one sign and still needs a urine culture to confirm the diagnosis, but the presence of foul-smelling urine should make him or her more suspicious that your younger child has a UTI, especially if your child has an unexplained fever.
Related:
UTI - Definition of UTI
New AAP Urinary Tract Infection Guidelines
Urinary Tract Infection Symptoms
Don't Panic - Your Child has Fever
How can you tell if your child has a urinary tract infection?
Older preschool and school age children, often have classic symptoms, such as painful urination, urinating more frequently, having accidents, abdominal pain, fever, or having urine that is cloudy or has an unusual smell.
Unfortunately, it can sometimes be harder to detect urinary tract symptoms in younger infants and toddlers as they can have different symptoms, are usually not potty trained, so don't have accidents, and may not be able to communicate the specific symptoms that they are having.
So instead of painful urination, a younger child might just be irritable. Other non-specific symptoms might include having a fever without a source to explain it and foul-smelling urine.
A new study that will appear in the May issue of Pediatrics, "Association of Malodorous Urine With Urinary Tract Infection in Children Aged 1 to 36 Months," looked to see if foul-smelling urine could be linked to a positive urine culture result and predict a diagnosis of a urinary tract infection.
While the researchers did show "that parental reporting of malodorous urine was associated with UTI in young children," they also found that:
- 40% of children with UTI in our series did not have malodorous urine, and
- more than 30% of parents reported malodorous urine in children without UTI
So while 57 percent of children with UTI had foul-smelling urine, indicating that stinky urine is linked to urinary tract infections, the researchers concluded that "it does not have a sufficiently high specificity or sensitivity to definitely rule in or out a diagnosis of UTI."
So basically, your pediatrician can't diagnose a UTI based just on that one sign and still needs a urine culture to confirm the diagnosis, but the presence of foul-smelling urine should make him or her more suspicious that your younger child has a UTI, especially if your child has an unexplained fever.
Related:
UTI - Definition of UTI
New AAP Urinary Tract Infection Guidelines
Urinary Tract Infection Symptoms
Don't Panic - Your Child has Fever
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