Case series have suggested that pneumococcal endocarditis is a rare disease, mostly reported in patients with co-morbidities but no underlying valve disease, with a rapid progression to heart failure, and high mortality. We performed a case-control study of 28 patients with pneumococcal endocarditis (cases), and 56 patients with non-pneumococcal endocarditis (controls), not matched for sex and ...

Traditional confirmation procedures for the identification of a pneumococcal serotype require an isolate. Non-culture-based confirmation protocols are available. Some of these confirm only the presence of pneumococci, and others are capable of identifying a limited number of serotypes. The increased use of pneumococcal polysaccharide and conjugate vaccines, especially in high-risk patient group...

Measuring the broad impact of pneumococcal disease requires multiple surveillance modalities. Four major data sources elucidate the burden of pneumococcal disease in Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey has identified pneumonia as the leading cause of childhood death. By extrapolation of mortality rates in the survey to the Bangladesh population, it has been estimated that a...

Geographic variation in drug susceptibility among isolates of Streptococcus pneumoniae has influenced national treatment guidelines for community-acquired pneumonia. Whether individual hospital susceptibility data provide reliable and valid information for providers is unclear. We examined the geographic and temporal variability in hospital-reported rates of pneumococcal susceptibility. We surv...

Children treated for acute leukaemia are at increased risk of infection with Streptococcus pneumoniae. The basis for this may include low levels of pneumococcal antibody but this has not been well studied. The authors measured serotype-specific pneumococcal IgG antibody concentrations in children treated for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) and acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) ≥6 months after c...

The pneumococcal pilus has been shown to be an important determinant of adhesion and virulence in mouse models of colonization, pneumonia, and bacteremia. A pilus is capable of inducing protective immunity, supporting its inclusion in next-generation pneumococcal protein vaccine formulations. Whether this vaccine target is common among pneumococci in sub-Saharan Africa is uncertain. To define t...

Recent studies have shown that most of deaths in the 1918 influenza pandemic were caused by secondary bacterial infections, primarily pneumococcal pneumonia. Given the availability of antibiotics and pneumococcal vaccination, how will contemporary populations fare when they are next confronted with pandemic influenza due to a virus with the transmissibility and virulence of that of 1918? To add...

A seven-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7) introduced in the United States in 2000 has been shown to reduce invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) in both vaccinated children and adults through induction of herd immunity. We assessed the impact of infant immunization on pneumococcal pneumonia hospitalizations and mortality in all age groups using Health Care Utilization Project State Inp...

INTRODUCTION Streptococcus pneumoniae remains a major global health problem and a leading cause of death in children worldwide. The factors that influence development of pneumococcal sepsis remain poorly understood, although increasing evidence points towards a role for genetic variation in the host's immune response. Recent insights from the study of animal models, rare human primary immunodef...

BACKGROUND Welders are at increased risk of pneumococcal pneumonia. The mechanism for this association is not known. The capacity of pneumococci to adhere to and infect lower airway cells is mediated by host-expressed platelet-activating factor receptor (PAFR). OBJECTIVE We sought to assess the effect of mild steel welding fumes (MS-WF) on PAFR-dependent pneumococcal adhesion and infection to...