Background: Pneumococcal carriage has often been studied from a serotype perspective; however, little is known about the strain-specific carriage and inter-strain interactions. Here, we examined the strain-level carriage and co-colonization dynamics of Streptococcus pneumoniae in a Swiss birth cohort by PacBio single-molecule real-time (SMRT) sequencing of the plyNCR marker.
Methods: A total of 872 nasal swab (NS) samples were included from 47 healthy infants during the first year of life.
Pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs) have lowered the incidence of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) worldwide. However, the influence of regional vaccine uptake differences on the changing epidemiology of IPD remains unclear. We aimed to examine the overall impact of both seven- and 13-valent PCVs (PCV7 and PCV13) on IPD in Switzerland.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe structure of the exopolysaccharide capsule of is defined by the genetic arrangement of the capsule operon allowing the unequivocal identification of the pneumococcal serotype. Here, we investigated the environment-dependent composition of the polysaccharide structure of serotype 6F. When grown in a chemically defined medium (CDM) with glucose versus galactose, the exopolysaccharide capsule of the serotype 6F strains reveals a ratio of 1/0.
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