Pneumococcal carriage amongst children in Adelaide, South Australia.
Amongst 1267 healthy children 6 months to 4.5 years of age in Adelaide, the pneumococcal carriage rate from a single nasal swab sampling was 29% in the period 1980-1. Of 269 children, sampled monthly on five occasions, 91% carried a pneumococcus on one or more occasions: 55% carried a single type, 33% carried two types, 2% carried three types and 1% carried four types; 18% carried a pneumococcus on either 4 or 5 occasions. The commonest types encountered were types 6, 19 and 23 in that order, and these three types constituted 57% of the total: other common types (greater than 5% of the total) were types 14, 15 and 11, and the six commonest types constituted 77% of the total. Of these, types 6, 14, 19 and 23 commonly cause systemic disease in children; on the other hand types 11 and 15 cause disease infrequently. The number of strains showing antimicrobial drug resistance was low: on quantitative testing 0.7% of 291 isolates examined showed relative resistance to benzylpenicillin and 0.7% were resistant to tetracycline; 10.9% of 230 isolates examined showed resistance to co-trimoxazole; dual or multiple drug resistance was not detected, and all isolates tested were susceptible to chloramphenicol, erythromycin, lincomycin and rifampicin.
Hansman
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D
Department of Microbiology, Adelaide Children's Hospital, South Australia.
Morris
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S
D002353:Carrier State / Q000453:epidemiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008826:Microbial Sensitivity Tests; D009296:Nasal Cavity / Q000382:microbiology*; D011008:Pneumococcal Infections / Q000453:epidemiology*; D012703:Serotyping; D013021:South Australia; D013296:Streptococcus pneumoniae / Q000145:classification / Q000187:drug effects / Q000302:isolation & purification*