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Abstract: At this time, many antibiotics have decreased activity against Streptococcus pneumoniae, a major agent of infectious disease. In this study, we evaluated antibiotic susceptibility and serogroups of strains isolated from bacteraemia, meningitis and acute otitis media in adults and children over the 1997- 2003 period in Brittany, France. In 2003, 62% of the isolates were not susceptible to penicillin and 11% were fully resistant. The prevalence of erythromycin resistance was 63%. Resistance rates were higher among isolates recovered from children than adults. Serogroups 19 and 14 were the most frequently isolated, especially the 19 one among children. The emergence of this serogroup might be a consequence of the use of heptavalent conjugate vaccine introduced in 2001 in France. Future surveillance after vaccination will be needed to detect emerging serogroups and resistance among S. pneumoniae. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Throughout 1999, clinical microbiology laboratories of 13 hospitals in Brittany have recovered Streptococcus pneumoniae isolates in 832 patients, 312 (37.5%) female and 518 (62.2%) male. Two hundred fifty five of them (30.6%) were children. One hundred eighty eight isolates were recovered from blood cultures (22.6%), 16 from CSF (1.9%), 449 from lungs (54%), and 88 from ear exsudates (10.6%).A 5 μg oxacillin-disk test was used to detect isolates with reduced susceptibility to penicillin G. Determination of MICs of penicillin G, amoxicillin and cefotaxime were then performed by agar dilution method on 402 strains previously categorized resistant or intermediate.Five hundred forty six isolates were PSDP, 33.5% of them were resistant to penicillin G, 2.2% to amoxicillin and 0.2% to cefotaxime. As expected, a decreased susceptibility to beta-lactamins was frequently associated with resistance to macrolides, cotrimoxazole and tetracyclin. Among PSDP, the most prevalent serotypes were 23 (23.7%), 14 (23.5%) and 19 (19.1%).In Brittany, the constante rise of PSDP (1993–1994: 28.5%; 1997: 56.4%; 1999: 65.6 %) could be perhaps explain by analysis of social and demographic data. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]