Monitoring of Streptococcus pneumoniae antibiotic resistance is of great importance due to the frequency of strains becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics. In this study, we report the antibiotic susceptibility of the serotypes of S. pneumoniae strains isolated from healthy children aged 1-24 months in the Marrakech region of Morocco. Resistance to penicillin (38.7%) was frequently associated with resistance to other antibiotics. The highest rates of resistance were to cotrimoxazole (trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole) (49.3%), erythromycin (48.7%), tetracycline (37.3%), lincomycin (35.3%), chloramphenicol (32.7%) and ciprofloxacin (24%). Prisitinamycin and vancomycin were effective against all isolated pneumococcal strains (100% sensitive strains). Gentamycin demonstrated good efficacy on S. pneumoniae, with 98.7% of strains being sensitive. Multidrug resistance characterized 43.33% of all studied strains. Of the multidrug-resistant strains, 36.92% were resistant to erythromycin (E), tetracycline (T) and cotrimoxazole (Co: sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim) (phenotype ETCo, n = 24), and 20% had decreased susceptibility to beta-lactams, erythromycin and cotrimoxazole (phenotype PECo, n = 13). A total of 29.23% of S. pneumoniae strains exhibited combined resistance to four antibiotics (phenotype PETCo, n = 19). This study reports the status of resistance and multiresistance of S. pneumoniae strains in the Marrakech region of Morocco.
Keywords: Antibiotic resistance; Multiresistance; S. pneumoniae; Serogroup.
Copyright © 2013 King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.