Molecular characterisation, antibiotic sensitivity and serotyping of hungarian Streptococcus pneumoniae isolates.

In this study we summarise the results of the first major epidemiological survey of Streptococcus pneumoniae isolates from Hungary. Neither the incidence nor the level of resistance to penicillin of the strains was high, we observed, however, 40% macrolide resistance. The main underlying mechanism was the presence of the erm(B) gene, but we could find also strains with the mef gene, some of them with unusually high resistance levels. The main serogroups in ranking order were 6, 9, 19, 23 and 14, accounting together for 88.2% of all typed strains. We found a close correlation between serotypes and resistance. As a result of genotyping the penicillin non-susceptible strains, we found that the penicillin resistant isolates all belonged to the same PFGE clone, while in the intermediate group the diversity was greater. We could compare our isolates to the successful international PMEN clones, and proved the presence of some of them in Hungary. In general, we could establish the similarity of Hungarian pneumococci and other international isolates.