Detection and Serotyping of Streptococcus pneumoniae Carried in Healthy Adults with a Modified PCR Method

Abstract

Detection of Streptococcus pneumoniae colonized in the pharynx of healthy carriers currently relies on conventional culture methods of direct plating with pharyngeal swab specimens. The accurate measurement of the carriage of pneumococci, however, has not been necessarily achieved with these methods due to low density colonization and contamination of numerous oral streptococci that express α-hemolysis. A PCR-based detection method of pneumococci-specific for lytA as well as PCR serotyping of S. pneumoniae was recently developed and their effectiveness was confirmed. We modified the reaction conditions of these methods to improve the detection rate and applied them to the measurement of S. pneumoniae carried in healthy adults. Pharyngeal swab specimens obtained from 110 healthy volunteers over 40 and living in Nagoya were enriched for 5 hours with broth medium supplemented with rabbit serum and the template DNA for PCR was extracted from the mixed enriched culture. Of 110 specimens 36 (32.7％) were lytA-positive, the rate of which was much higher than the results of previous culture-based studies. The DNA template preparations were then used for PCR-based serotyping with primers specific for each of the types included in pneumococcal 23 valent vaccine (PPV23). We found that 28 out of 36 lytA-positive carriers were identified as being positive for the serotypes belonging to PPV23, although serotypes 6A and 6B were indistinguishable with the PCR method. The most frequent serotype was serotype 14, and serotypes 4, 18C, and 6A/B were also frequently identified. Five lytA-positive carriers were previously vaccinated with PPV23, and among them, 4 were positive for serotypes contained in PPV23. We recommend PCR-based identification and serotyping of S. pneumoniae in broth enrichment culture of pharyngeal swab specimens as a reliable method for the surveillance of healthy carriers with low density colonization.