The Turkish Journal of Pediatrics
2013 , Vol 55 , Num 6
Risk factors for nasopharyngeal carriage of Streptococcus pneumoniae in healthy Turkish children after the addition of heptavalent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7) to the national vaccine schedule
Departments of 1Pediatric Infectious Diseases and 4Biostatistics and 3Cebeci Hospital Microbiology Laboratory, Ankara
University Faculty of Medicine, and 2Molecular Microbiology Research and Application Laboratory, National Public Health
Agency, Ankara, Turkey. E-mail: doktorhalil@gmail.com
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of pneumococcal
conjugate vaccine (PCV7) on nasopharyngeal (NP) carriage rates of Streptococcus
pneumoniae in healthy Turkish children. The study was conducted on 1101
healthy Turkish children between 1 month and 18 years of age. The median
and mean ages of the children were 25 months (1 month-18 years) and
45.7±49.6 months, respectively. S. pneumoniae was isolated in 241/1101 (21.9%)
children included in the study. According to multivariate analysis, being <5
years of age, presence of a child attending a daycare center, recovery from
respiratory infection within the last month, low income level of the family,
and presence of more children in the family were found to be the risk factors
for the NP pneumococcal carriage. The carriage rate of NP pneumococci in
healthy children was not influenced by PCV7 in Turkey.
Keywords :
child, pneumococcal carriage, pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, Streptococcus
pneumoniae.