For the average person, getting a kidney infection is relatively uncommon. There are some conditions, however, that can lead to kidney infections. The medical term for this kind of infection is called pyelonephritis. It can lead to kidney failure and also to spread of infection from the kidneys to the bloodstream, leading to a dangerous case of gram negative sepsis, which can be fatal in the elderly.



Kidney stones can be a cause of chronic or recurrent kidney infection. Stones are foreign bodies inside the ?pelvis? or urinary side of the kidney and can allow bacteria to seed onto them. The kidney stones then become a reservoir for bacteria, leading to recurrent infection.

Prostate disease can cause kidney infection. When the prostate is enlarged or inflamed, it can result in a back up of urine from the bladder all the way up to the kidneys. This can trap bacteria in the urinary tract and can lead to both bladder and kidney infections. These can be very dangerous because prostate enlargement is most common in elderly men who often do not fight off infection well. The mortality rate from kidney infections is higher in the elderly than they are in young people.

Any kind of narrowing or blockage further down the urinary tract can cause kidney infection. Children can be born with abnormal ureters that cause them to develop kidney infections at a very early age. Only through X-Rays involving dye can the blockage be found and repaired. Anytime a child gets frequent bladder or kidney infections, especially boys in which infections are rare, an X-Ray should be done to determine whether or not the child is born with an abnormally placed ureters or ureters.

Women in pregnancy are prone to kidney infection. They often present with blood in the urine and extreme pain on the side where the infected kidney is. This can cause irritability of the uterus and preterm labor.

Most kidney infection problems occur when bacteria come up from the outside through the bladder and up inside the ureters. In rarer cases, however, the individual can have infection first in the bloodstream, a condition called gram negative sepsis. Because the kidney filters blood, it can collect bacteria and cause infection in the kidneys themselves.

The signs and symptoms of a kidney infection are often unmistakable. The individual experiences a fever with flank pain on the side where the kidney is infected. They also have bacteria, blood and sometimes kidney cells showing up in the urinalysis. This is a very painful infection and must be treated aggressively.

The primary cause of a kidney infection is that of bacteria called Gram negative bacteria. They are the type of bacteria found in the stool and because of the proximity of the rectum and the urethra, bacteria from the stool can come up through the urethra, into the bladder and up through the ureters to the kidneys.