Nasopharyngeal pneumococcal carriage in healthy Turkish children after 13-valent conjugated pneumococcal vaccine implementation in the national immunization program

Background: In Turkey, pneumococcal conjugated vaccine (PCV) was introduced to the national immunization program as PCV7 in 2008, and was replaced with PCV13 in 2011. The aims of this study wereto investigate the effects of PCV13 on nasopharyngeal pneumococcal carriage (NPC) by determining theserotype distribution, and to identify risk factors for carriage, in healthy Turkish children. Methods: This prospective study was conducted on 500 healthy children aged 0-13 years between Apriland November 2014. Nasopharyngeal swab samples were taken, and molecular method for capsularserotyping was performed by multiplex PCR. Results: Of 500 children, 43.4% were unvaccinated with a PCV (7- or 13-valent), 56.6% were vaccinatedand The NPC rate was found to be 9.8%. Of 49 positive Streptococcus pneumoniae isolates, 26 (53%) werePCV13 vaccine strains (VSs), and 17 (34.7%) were non-VS. Six isolates (12.2%) were not typeable by themethod applied. The most common serotypes detected were serotype 3 (18.3%), serotype 19F (14.2%), serotype 6A/B (8.1%), serotype 11A (8.1%), and serotype 15B (8.1%). The total coverage rate of the PCV13serotypes was 60.4%. Conclusion: A significant decrease in carriage rate was detected within three years after the introductionof PCV13 in Turkey. However, the nasopharyngeal carriage of PCV13 strains was found to be interestinglyhigh. (c) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University forHealth Sciences. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).