Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Jul 8;21(1):661.
doi: 10.1186/s12879-021-06302-5.

Nasopharyngeal carriage of Streptococcus pneumoniae among healthy children in Kassena-Nankana districts of Northern Ghana

Deborah K Narwortey  1   2 , Alex Owusu-Ofori  3 , Hans-Christian Slotved  4 , Eric S Donkor  5 , Patrick O Ansah  6 , Paul Welaga  6 , Godfred Agongo  6 , Abraham R Oduro  6
Affiliations

Nasopharyngeal carriage of Streptococcus pneumoniae among healthy children in Kassena-Nankana districts of Northern Ghana

Deborah K Narwortey et al. BMC Infect Dis. .

Abstract

Background: Pneumococcal vaccine immunizations may be responsible for alterations in serotype epidemiology within a region. This study investigated the pneumococcal carriage prevalence and the impact of the 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV-13) on circulating serotypes among healthy children in Northern Ghana.

Methods: This was a cross sectional study conducted in the Kassena-Nankana districts of Northern Ghana from November to December during the dry season of 2018. Nasopharyngeal swabs collected from 193 participants were cultured per standard microbiological protocols and pneumococcal isolates were serotyped using the latex agglutination technique and the capsular Quellung reaction test. We examined for any association between the demographic characteristics of study participants and pneumococcal carriage using chi-square test and logistic regression.

Results: Of the 193 participants that were enrolled the mean age was 8.6 years and 54.4% were females. The carriage rate among the participants was 32.6% (63/193), and twenty different serotypes were identified. These included both vaccine serotypes (VT), 35% (7/20) and non-vaccine serotypes (NVT), 65% (13/20). The predominant serotypes (34 and 11A), both of which were NVT, accounted for a prevalence of 12.8%. PCV-13 covered only 35% of serotypes identified whiles 40% of serotypes are covered by PPV 23.

Conclusion: Post-vaccination carriage of S. pneumoniae is high and is dominated by non-vaccine serotypes. There is therefore a need for the conduct of invasive pneumococcal disease surveillance (IPD) to find out if the high non-vaccine serotype carriage translates to disease. And in addition, a review of the currently used PCV-13 vaccine in the country would be considered relevant.

Keywords: Carriage; Non-vaccine serotypes; Northern Ghana; PCV-13; S. pneumoniae; Vaccine serotypes.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared no competing of interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Map Of Ghana Showing the Upper East Region in Left Panel and Map of the Upper East Region Showing The KND Area in Right Panel. Sauce: (Oduro et al. 2012)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Serotype distribution of S. pneumoniae among children aged between 5 to 12 years. Serotypes are listed on the X-axis. A Serotype distribution among PCV-13 vaccinated children. B Serotype distribution among PCV-13 unvaccinated children. C Serotype distribution among all participants
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Comparison analysis of vaccine serotype coverage within the study population and among PCV-13 vaccinated and PCV-13 unvaccinated children. Vaccine targeted serotypes are present in lower proportions as indicated on the X-axis
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Finland M. Forward to the second printing. In: Heffron R, editor. Pneumonia: with special reference to pneumococcal lobar pneumonia. Cambridge: Massachusetts Harvard Univ Press; 1978.
    1. Bogaert D, De Groot RHP. Streptococcus pneumoniae colonisation: the key to pneumococcal disease. Lancet Infect Dis. 2004;4(3):144–154. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(04)00938-7. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Johnson HL, Deloria-Knoll M, Levine OS. Systematic evaluation of serotypes causing invasive pneumococcal disease among children under five: the pneumococcal global serotype project. PLoS Med. 2010;7(10):e1000348. 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000348. - PMC - PubMed
    1. O’Brien KL, Wolfson LJ, Watt JP, Henkle E, Deloria-Knoll M, McCall N. Burden of disease caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae in children younger than 5 years: global estimates. Lancet [Internet] 2009;374(9693):893–902. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61204-6. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Wahl B, O’Brien KL, Greenbaum A, Majumder A, Liu L, Chu Y,. Burden of Streptococcus pneumoniae and Haemophilus influenzae type b disease in children in the era of conjugate vaccines: global, regional, and national estimates for 2000-15. Lancet Glob Heal [Internet]. 2018 Jul 1 [cited 2019 Jun 11];6(7):e744–e757. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29903376. - PMC - PubMed

MeSH terms

Substances