Dear Customer (name blocked for privacy),

The presence of a small amount of Bacteria and white cells in the urine for women who are menstruating is not considered by many physicians to be a condition that necessarily requires treatment.

Physicians have a condition of practice that often differers based on whether their approach is conservative or aggressive, or even by practice. An internist and a urologist may approach the lab results differently.

In my military medicine, we never based treatment on lab results alone. Treatment or non-treatment (we call it management of a disease or condition) depends on the total picture of lab results in the presence or absence of symptoms or norms.

For example: In the absence of symptomatology such as burning urination or urinary tract or bladder pain and irritation, we would view a low level of bacteria and WBC's as expected in menstruating women.

On the other hand, urine is sterile or at least clean, unless you have a disease process going on. There for some physicians would want to at least do a culture of the urine, to make sure the Bacteria is live and identify it for a disease. Bacteria in the urine is never considered normal by some physicians.

In the absence of symptoms, the physician may consider a low level of bacteria to be caused by the sample process, perhaps it was not a clean catch and the bacteria are staphylococcal from the skin surface surrounding the meatus.

In my opinion, any presence of bacteria in the urine requires a call to the physician. This is especially true if you had any symptoms at all. At the very least, you can ask the doctor if he or she ran a culture, or if they identified the type of bact.

Bacterial infections of the urinary tract can be staph, strep, or ecoli. However, most often they are ecoli, and require treatment. (If you are sexually active, you will want to eliminate the possibility of an STD).