Susceptibility of streptococcus pneumoniae to fluoroquinolones and macrolides in upper respiratory tract infections.

Introduction: Streptococcal species are known as the most common cause of bacterial upper respiratory tract infections (URTI). Once bacterial infection is diagnosed it demands empirical antibiotic prescription. On the other hand antimicrobial resistance is a global burden in today's medicine. For that reason, knowing of antimicrobial susceptibility patterns in population is an important background for successful treatment of bacterial caused URTI. The aim of this study was to analyze S. pneumoniae resistance and susceptibility patterns to fluoroquinolones and macrolides in URTI.

Materials And Methods: The results of microbiological examination of 2,055 pharyngeal swabs taken from patients with bacterial caused tonsillitis, pharyngitis and laryngitis were analyzed. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing for levofloxacin, ofloxacin, gatifloxacin, erythromycin, clarithromycin, azithromycin was performed with the disk-diffusion method.

Results: The incidence of S. pneumoniae in the etiological structure of bacterial caused URTI was increasing from 22.47% of cases in 2011 to 36.48% in 2015. The susceptibility of this microorganism to ofloxacin, gatifloxacin and levofloxacin decreased from 96.25%, 100% and 95.00% in 2011 to 44.22%, 65.99% and 62.59% in 2015 respectively. The susceptibility of S. pneumoniae to erythromycin, azithromycin and clarithromycin also decreased from 30.00%, 63.75% and 41.25% in 2011 to 6.80%, 26.53%, 27.21 in 2015.

Conclusions: Among investigated antibiotics levofloxacin can be recommended for empiric therapy of URTI because of high pneumococci susceptibility to this drug.