Prevalence, serotype distribution, and antimicrobial susceptibility profile of Streptococcus pneumoniae among patients with acute respiratory tract infection

We investigated the nasopharyngeal (NP) carriage and antimicrobial susceptibility profile of Streptococcus pneumoniae among adults and children with acute respiratory tract infection (ARTI). NP swabs were collected from ARTI patients in Tabanan, Bali, Indonesia, in 2017. Serotyping of S. pneumoniae and antibiotic susceptibility profile were performed by multiplex sequential PCR and the disk diffusion method, respectively. Out of 200 ARTI patients, S. pneumoniae strains were carried by 22.6% and 2.4% of children (36/159) and adults (1/41), respectively. Serotype 6A/6B was the most common serotype among cultured strains (21%) followed by 19F (18%) and 14 (8%). Most isolates were susceptible to chloramphenicol (87%), followed by clindamycin (74%), erythromycin (72%), sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim (59%), and tetracycline (44%). This finding provides baseline information on the serotype distribution of S. pneumoniae carriage among ARTI patients in Indonesia.