Abstract
We studied the carriage rate, distribution of serotype, and antimicrobial profile of Streptococcus pneumoniae (S. pneumoniae) among patients with acute respiratory tract infections (ARTI) in two primary health centres and a tertiary referral hospital from 2019 to 2020 in Manado, North Sulawesi, Indonesia before 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13) introduction. A total of 106 nasopharyngeal swab samples were collected from children and adult patients. Serotyping of S. pneumoniae strain was performed by sequential multiplex PCR and Quellung reaction. Antimicrobial profile was performed by the disc diffusion method. We identified thirty-one patients carried S. pneumoniae strains (29 %). The S. pneumoniae carriage rate was found to be higher among children aged 2-5 years (13/32; 40.6 %) than in children under 1 year (8/27; 29.6 %), children and adolescents under 18 years of age (5/20; 25.0 %) and adult patients (5/27; 18.5 %). The distribution of serotypes varied, including 14, 18C, 19A, 23F, 19F and 35B (two strains each) and 1, 3, 6B, 6C, 31, 9V, 15C, 16F, 17F, 23A, 35F (one strain each) and non-typeable (9/31; 29 %). We found S. pneumoniae isolates were susceptible to vancomycin (30/31; 97 %), chloramphenicol (29/31; 94 %), clindamycin (29/31; 94 %), erythromycin (22/31; 71 %), azithromycin (22/31; 71 %), tetracycline (14/31; 45 %), penicillin (11/31; 35 %), and sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim (10/31; 32 %). This study provides supporting baseline data on distribution of serotype and antimicrobial profile of S. pneumoniae among patients with ARTI before PCV13 introduction in Manado, North Sulawesi, Indonesia.