{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,15]],"date-time":"2026-05-15T10:06:59Z","timestamp":1778839619690,"version":"3.51.4"},"reference-count":32,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"5","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,1]],"date-time":"2026-05-01T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1777593600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"New Frontier Research Fund","award":["NFRFE-2019-01365"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["NFRFE-2019-01365"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Information"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) represent one of the most prevalent bacterial infections globally, posing significant health burdens, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), due to delayed diagnoses, limited access to laboratory services, and rising antimicrobial resistance. This study presents a machine learning (ML)-based diagnostic support framework for early UTI detection, leveraging structured clinical data and explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) techniques to enhance interpretability and trust among healthcare providers. A patient dataset containing 4865 records was used in the study to train and test Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), Decision Tree (DT) and Random Forest (RF) classifiers, while class imbalance was addressed using Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE). The performance of the models was evaluated through accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, Log Loss, and AUC-ROC, and random forest showed the best results (accuracy: 86.43%, F1-score: 86.71%, AUC-ROC: 0.8695). To ensure that such models can be adopted by stakeholders in the health sector, Local Interpret-able Model-agnostic Explanations (LIME) were integrated, which identified painful urination, urinary frequency, and suprapubic pain as primary predictors in the model. This study shows that interpretable ML models can be helpful in resource-limited regions in predicting UTIs, thereby rendering a solution to improve the management of infections in these regions.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/info17050435","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,1]],"date-time":"2026-05-01T16:54:07Z","timestamp":1777654447000},"page":"435","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Integrating Risk Factors and Symptoms for Urinary Tract Infection Diagnosis Using an Explainable AI Approach in Low-Resource Regions"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"17","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2199-5049","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Kingsley","family":"Attai","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Computing, Ritman University, Ikot Ekpene 530101, Nigeria"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Daniel","family":"Asuquo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Computing, University of Uyo, Uyo 520103, Nigeria"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Kingsley","family":"Akputu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computing Sciences, Faculty of Science, Admiralty University of Nigeria, Ibusa 320103, Nigeria"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Okure","family":"Obot","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Computing, University of Uyo, Uyo 520103, Nigeria"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Cornelia","family":"Thomas","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Social and Management Sciences, Ritman University, Ikot Ekpene 530101, Nigeria"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Faith-Valentine","family":"Uzoka","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, College of Science, Engineering and Technology, Texas Southern University, 3100 Cleburne St, Houston, TX 77004, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Ekerette","family":"Attai","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Novena Computers and Technologies Limited, Uyo 520103, Nigeria"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Christie","family":"Akwaowo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Health Research and Development, University of Uyo Teaching Hospital, Uyo 520103, Nigeria"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Faith-Michael","family":"Uzoka","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mathematics and Computing, Mount Royal University, Calgary, AB T3E 6K6, Canada"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,1]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"533","DOI":"10.1016\/j.csbj.2024.07.018","article-title":"A step forward in the diagnosis of urinary tract infections: From machine learning to clinical practice","volume":"24","author":"Flores","year":"2024","journal-title":"Comput. 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