Microbiologic characteristics of the pneumococcus disease in children under 5 years from Santiago de Cuba

Introduction: The infection due to Streptococcus pneumoniae constitutes an important cause of morbimortality in the world, mainly in children under 5 years, that causes from 1 to 2 million annual deaths. Objective: To determine the presence of S. pneumoniae in clinical samples obtained in children. Methods: A descriptive and cross-sectional study was carried out in children under 5 years of age with clinical diagnosis of invasive pneumococcus disease, assisted in two children hospitals from Santiago de Cuba during the period 2014-2018. Of the 1466 clinical samples taken and processed, in 131 the pathogen agent was isolated; these corresponded to 59 patients with clinical forms of the infection and 72 carriers of the disease. For the statistical processing of the information the absolute and relative frequencies were used as summary measures. Results: In general the positivity for S. pneumoniae was of 8.9 %, with more isolation frequencies in the samples of cerebrospinal fluid (81.8 %), pleural fluid (47.1 %) and otic exudate (21.9 %) that also coincided with the highest percentages of pneumonia (61.0), acute otitis media (23.7) and meningitis (15.3), as clinical forms of the neumococcus disease that mainly affected 1 year children, followed by those over 2 years. In a same way, 9 serotypes of S. pneumoniae were identified, with prevalence of the 19A (39.0 %), and 14 (25.4 %) and the 6A (11.9 %). In patients carrying the bacteria in the nasopharynx, 8 serotypes were identified, of which the 19A and 14 prevailed. Lastly, a high microbian resistance to erythromycin and the combination trimethoprim-sulfametoxazole was found. Conclusions: The results of this study provided a scientific referent before the introduction of the Cuban antipneumococcus vaccine that will allow to evaluate its impact in the incidence of this disease.