Nasopharyngeal carriage of Streptococcus pneumoniae and serotypes indentified among nursing home residents in comparison to the elderly and patients younger than 65 years living in domestic environment
Article Category: Original scientific article
Published Online: May 26, 2017
Page range: 172 - 178
Received: Jan 25, 2016
Accepted: Mar 23, 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/sjph-2017-0023
Keywords
© National Institute of Public Health, Slovenia
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.
Introduction
In Slovenia, there is little data available on pneumococcal vaccination rates and no data on asymptomatic NPCR and serotypes in the population of nursing home residents in comparison to the elderly living in domestic environment, therefore the goal was to gain these data.
Methods
A cross sectional epidemiological study was performed. Nasopharyngeal swabs from 151 nursing home residents, 150 elderly living in domestic environment, and 38 adults less than 65 years old were collected twice (in two consecutive years). The swabs were analysed for pneumococcal identification and serotyping. Patient data were collected from medical files and medical history.
Results
No statistically significant differences in NPCR were seen between compared groups in two consecutive years. An average NPCR in two consecutive years in nursing home residents was 1.45%, in the elderly living in domestic environment 0.85%, and in adults less than 65 years old 7.05%. Serotypes identified among nursing home residents were 6B and 9N, among the group of elderly living in domestic environment, 6A and among adults less than 65 years old, 35F, 18C and 3. Pneumococcal vaccination rates were low (3.3% in nursing home residents, 6% in the elderly from domestic environment and 0% in the group of adults less than 65 years old).
Conclusions
Our data suggests that NPCR and the proportion of people vaccinated with pneumococcal vaccine among the elderly are low. We identified different serotypes in all groups, only one person was a chronic carrier (serotype 35F).