Purpose : Acute respiratory infection(ARI) has been a major cause of morbidity and mortality in world wide. It has been led to antibiotic abuse, social, financial and public health problems because their specific diagnosis are difficult and its causat...
Purpose : Acute respiratory infection(ARI) has been a major cause of morbidity and mortality in world wide. It has been led to antibiotic abuse, social, financial and public health problems because their specific diagnosis are difficult and its causative agents are not clear, so KCDC should construct and manage the surveillance of ARI and atypical pneumonia since 2005 year. It could be useful for acquiring informations of epidemic pathogens and antibiotics resistance, and establishing the policy of diagnosis and treatment. In this study, we collected specimen from patients all over the country and performed culture and identification of causative agents, antibiotic susceptibility of isolated respiratory strains and PCR analysis of atypical pneumonia specimens.
Methods : For the surveillance study, we isolated and identified 8 causative strains including Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, Staphylococcus aureus, Moraxella catarrhalis, Streptococcus pyogenes, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacte baumanii. We collected nasopharyngeal aspirates from 65 internal, pediatric clinics and medical institutions in 16 areas in Korea. These specimens collected from outpatient were inoculated within 24 hours and tested for accurate identification. The antibiotic susceptibility was tested with disk diffusion method suggested by CLSI. For the surveillance study of atypical pneumonia, Chlamydia. pneumoniae and Mycoplasma. pneumoniae were determined using culture and PCR in nasopharyngeal swabs from patients. Finally, we transported the result, isolated strains, the rest of specimens to the KCDC. In the case of Legionella specimens, were inoculated in a culture media and transported to the KCDC.
Results : In a total of 5,839 nasopharyngeal aspirations, 3,866 specimens were positive (66.2%). Three bacterial strains, M. catarrhalis(33.3%), S. pneumoniae(31.0%) and H. influenzae(27.6%) were frequently identified and S. aureus(6.7%), S. pyogenes(0.9%), K. pneumoniae(0.5%), A. baumannii(0.1%) and P. aeruginosa(<0.1%) were followed. The antibiotic-resistances of ß-lactamase, S. pneumoniae and H. influenzae, were 99.8% and 33.0%, respectively. From the determination of atypical pneumonia in 355 nasopharyngeal swabs, 14 specimens were positive in C. pneumoniae PCR and 10 specimens were positive in M. pneumoniae PCR.
Conclusions : We isolated causative agents from patients with ARI and atypical pneumonia, and confirmed their isolation frequency and antibiotic susceptibility. This data could be useful for the database of present ARI according to age, region and seasonal categories of bacterial isolation and antibiotic susceptibility in Korea.