Evidence for clonal expansion after antibiotic selection pressure: pneumococcal multilocus sequence types before and after mass azithromycin treatments.

Background: A clinical trial of mass azithromycin distributions for trachoma created a convenient experiment to test the hypothesis that antibiotic use selects for clonal expansion of preexisting resistant bacterial strains.

Methods: Twelve communities in Ethiopia received mass azithromycin distributions every 3 months for 1 year. A random sample of 10 children aged 0-9 years from each community was monitored by means of nasopharyngeal swab sampling before mass azithromycin distribution and after 4 mass treatments. Swab specimens were tested for Streptococcus pneumoniae, and isolates underwent multilocus sequence typing.

Results: Of 82 pneumococcal isolates identified before treatment, 4 (5%) exhibited azithromycin resistance, representing 3 different sequence types (STs): 177, 6449, and 6494. The proportion of isolates that were classified as one of these 3 STs and were resistant to azithromycin increased after 4 mass azithromycin treatments (14 of 96 isolates [15%]; P = .04). Using a classification index, we found evidence for a relationship between ST and macrolide resistance after mass treatments (P < .0001). The diversity of STs-as calculated by the unbiased Simpson index-decreased significantly after mass azithromycin treatment (P = .045).

Conclusions: Resistant clones present before mass azithromycin treatments increased in frequency after treatment, consistent with the theory that antibiotic selection pressure results in clonal expansion of existing resistant strains.