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Epidemiological studies of Streptococcus pneumoniae carriage in the post-vaccination era among two risk groups: children and the elderly
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Streptococcus pneumoniae is a global cause of disease including pneumonia,
otitis media, conjunctivitis, sepsis, and bacterial meningitis. These infections are
not essential to the transmission or long-term survival of the bacterium; indeed,
S. pneumoniae depends on asymptomatic colonization of the human
nasopharynx for its dissemination to additional hosts. Considering this,
colonization studies are a good way to monitor changes in the pneumococcal
epidemiology that may result from the use of antibiotics and vaccines. The
molecular characterization of pneumococci is crucial to assess these changes
which highlight the need for the development and validation of easier and faster
methods of molecular typing.
Since 1996 our group has been monitoring the pneumococcal population
colonizing children attending day care centers. However, for several years these
studies have been confined to the Lisbon area. In this PhD we have addressed
this situation by including other regions of Portugal in our study. In addition, we
have started to study pneumococcal colonization in the elderly, the other age
group where the incidence of pneumococcal infections is high.
This thesis summarizes five studies conducted during this PhD. The first four
studies were focused on the pneumococcal epidemiology among the two age
groups where the rates of pneumococcal disease are highest: children up to six
years old and adults older than 60 years. The fifth and last study describes the
evaluation and validation of a new genotyping strategy for pneumococci.(...)
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Dissertation presented to obtain the Ph.D. degree in Biology/ Molecular Biology
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Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica