Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) Panel

Urinary tract infections are one of the most common reasons people seek care — and also one of the most frequently misdiagnosed. Symptoms like burning, urgency, frequency, and pelvic discomfort can be caused by a wide range of organisms, but the standard urine culture used for decades has real blind spots. Culture is optimized to grow fast, common bacteria like E. coli, which means slower-growing, fastidious, or less common organisms are often under-reported — or missed entirely. That's a major reason so many people get a "negative" culture despite having very real symptoms, or cycle through repeated rounds of antibiotics that don't fully resolve the problem.

This panel uses PCR (DNA detection) to test a single urine sample for 27 of the organisms most commonly responsible for urinary infections — a broad range of bacteria, atypical organisms, and fungi — so the actual cause is identified rather than assumed.

Who this test is for

This panel is especially useful if you're dealing with:

• Recurrent UTIs that keep coming back despite treatment
• Classic UTI symptoms but repeatedly negative urine cultures — one of the most common and frustrating scenarios this test helps resolve
• Symptoms that persist after a course of antibiotics, suggesting the original treatment didn't match the actual organism
• Complicated or higher-risk infections — including catheter-associated cases, structural urinary issues, diabetes, or a weakened immune system
• Older adults, where UTI symptoms are often atypical and infections can be polymicrobial
• A desire for targeted treatment rather than empiric broad-spectrum antibiotics prescribed before the cause is known

Why PCR instead of a standard urine culture

• It's comprehensive. One sample screens for 27 organisms at once — including common gram-negatives like E. coli, Klebsiella, and Proteus; gram-positives like Enterococcus, Staphylococcus saprophyticus, and Aerococcus; atypicals like Ureaplasma; and a full range of Candida species, including the emerging drug-resistant Candida auris.
• It detects polymicrobial infections. Many UTIs — especially recurrent and complicated ones — involve more than one organism, which standard culture often reports as a single dominant grower or dismisses as "mixed flora."
• It catches what culture misses. Fastidious and slow-growing organisms (Ureaplasma, Aerococcus, Corynebacterium urealyticum, certain Candida) frequently evade traditional culture but are detected directly by PCR.
• It's fast and sensitive. Results typically come back in about a day, and PCR can detect organisms even at low levels that culture-based testing may not flag.
• It supports the right treatment. Identifying the specific organism — or organisms — means more accurate, targeted therapy and less reliance on broad-spectrum antibiotics chosen by guesswork.