Pneumococcal carriage amongst children in Adelaide, South Australia

Abstract

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(> 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. © 1988, Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.