Antimicrobial Resistance and Type Distribution of Streptococcus pneumoniae Isolates Causing Systemic Infections in Germany, 1992-1994

Abstract

A prospective study of pneumococcal infections was performed in cooperation with 40 clinical microbiology laboratories in Germany. Minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) values for 844 strains of Streptococcus pneumoniae, isolated from patients with systemic infections, were determined in tests with penicillin, tetracycline, erythromycin, chloramphenicol, cefotaxime, and clindamycin by a standard broth microdilution method; 1.8% of pneumococcal isolates exhibited reduced susceptibility to penicillin (MIC, > or = 0.1 micrograms/mL). The Etest, which was used to confirm the level of resistance to penicillin, proved to be a reliable and easily performed method for determination of MICs. The rates of resistance to clindamycin, erythromycin, tetracycline, and chloramphenicol were 1.4%, 3.2%, 11.0%, and 1.9%, respectively. Resistance to cefotaxime was not observed. Typing of a randomly selected subgroup of all strains (n = 115) showed types 1 (9.6%), 14 (8.7%), 3 (7.8%), and 23F (7.8%) to be the most prevalent types in Germany. At least 86.1% of these pneumococcal strains belonged to capsular types included in the 23-valent vaccine.

Nationwide German Multicenter Study on the Prevalence of Antibiotic Resistance in Streptococcal Blood Isolates from Neutropenic Patients and Comparative In Vitro Activities of Quinupristin-Dalfopristin and Eight Other Antimicrobials

“…The serotype distribution of pneumococcal strains in neutropenic patients differs widely from that generally observed in invasive disease in Germany, where serotypes 1, 14, 3, and 23F are predominant in adults (19). Serotype 12F, which was most often seen in the present study, is generally detected in less than 1% of cases of invasive pneumococcal disease in Germany (17,19,23).…”

“…Serotype 12F, which was most often seen in the present study, is generally detected in less than 1% of cases of invasive pneumococcal disease in Germany (17,19,23). All serotype 12F strains were isolated at different institutions, indicating that an epidemiological relatedness of isolates is unlikely.…”

Antimicrobial susceptibility of Haemophilus influenzae, Neisseria meningitidis and Streptococcus pneumoniae isolates causing meningitis in The Netherlands, 1993-1994

“…In adjacent countries, the prevalences of penicillin resistance in CSF and blood isolates were 4.3% (Belgium, 1986(Belgium, -1993 and 1.8% (Germany, 1992-94) as compared with 0.5% in our isolates. Chloramphenicol resistance was found in 2.7% and 1.9% of isolates from Belgium and Germany, respectively, as compared with 0.3% of isolates in this study (Reinert et al, 1995;Verhaegen et al, 1995). The prevalence of penicillin resistance in CSF isolates was 40% and 25% in Spain (1979-89) and France (1993), respectively; 25% of isolates were chloramphenicol resistant (Fenoll et al, 1991;Linares et al, 1992;Olivier et al, 1994).…”

Characterization of German penicillin non-susceptible serotype 23F pneumococci using multilocus sequence typing

“…Penicillin resistance rates vary even between neighbouring European countries (Klugman et al, 1997;Pradier et al, 1997). An extremely high level of penicillin resistance is reported from southern and south-eastern Europe, whereas the level of pneumococcal â-lactam resistance remains low in Germany (Reinert et al, 1995(Reinert et al, , 2001(Reinert et al, , 2002von Kries et al, 2000), the Netherlands (Hermans et al, 1997), the northern European countries (Nielsen & Henrichsen, 1992;Henriques et al, 2000) and the UK (Johnson, 1998;Andrews et al, 1999).…”