For generations, people have consumed cranberry juice, convinced of its power to ward off urinary tract infections, though the exact mechanism of its action has not been well understood.

Women who reported having both a sexually transmitted disease (STD) and urinary tract infection (UTI) just before or during early pregnancy were four times more likely to have babies with gastroschisis—a severe birth defect in which infants are born with their intestines and other internal organs outside the abdomen, University of Utah researchers report in the online British Medical Journal.

Cranberry juice, long dissed as a mere folk remedy for relieving urinary tract infections in women, is finally getting some respect.

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found definitive proof that some of the bacteria that plague women with urinary tract infections (UTIs) are entrenched inside human bladder cells.

Although doctors routinely use IV antibiotics to cure patients with severe urinary tract infections (UTI), a new review from suggests that oral antibiotics work just as well — from treating acute symptoms to preventing long-term complications of UTI.

If you sit on cold boulders or forget to wear your woollen underwear, you can develop a urinary tract infection. However, these diseases are more complicated than this, and in some cases they have a genetic background.

A common herbal extract available in health food stores can greatly reduce urinary tract infections and could potentially enhance the ability of antibiotics to kill the bacteria that cause 90 percent of infections in the bladder.