Abstract

Abstract

Background: Rates of resistance to macrolide antibiotics in Streptococcus pneumoniae are rising around the world due to the spread of mobile genetic elements harboring mef (E) and erm (B) genes and post-vaccine clonal expansion of strains that carry them.

Results: Characterization of 592 clinical isolates collected in Arizona over a 10 year period shows 23.6% are macrolide resistant. The largest portion of the macrolide-resistant population, 52%, is dual mef (E)/erm (B)-positive. All dual-positive isolates are multidrug-resistant clonal lineages of Taiwan19F -14, mostly multilocus sequence type 320, carrying the recently described transposon Tn2010 . The remainder of the macrolide resistant S. pneumoniae collection includes 31% mef (E)-positive, and 9% erm (B)-positive strains.

Conclusions: The dual-positive, multidrug-resistant S. pneumoniae clones have likely expanded by switching to non-vaccine serotypes after the heptavalent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine release, and their success limits therapy options. This upsurge could have a considerable clinical impact in Arizona.

Details

Title
Dominance of multidrug resistant CC271 clones in macrolide-resistant streptococcus pneumoniae in Arizona
Author
Bowers, Jolene R; Driebe, Elizabeth M; Nibecker, Jennifer L; Wojack, Bette R; Sarovich, Derek S; Wong, Ada H; Brzoska, Pius M; Hubert, Nathaniel; Knadler, Andrew; Watson, Lindsey M; Wagner, David M; Furtado, Manohar R; Saubolle, Michael; Engelthaler, David M; Keim, Paul S
Pages
12
Publication year
2012
Publication date
2012
Publisher
BioMed Central
e-ISSN
14712180
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
922787167
Copyright
© 2012 Bowers et al; BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.