Pneumococcal pneumonia among shipyard workers: Inside the features of disease onset.
Travel Med Infect Dis
; 44: 102183, 2021.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1473503
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Several outbreaks of pneumococcal pneumonia among shipyard workers have been described. In this study, following a previous report of grouped cases, we aimed to elucidate the features of disease onset.METHODS:
We compared the population characteristics of shipyard workers with a confirmed diagnosis of pneumococcal pneumonia (N = 38) to those of workers without pneumonia (N = 53). We compared nine S. pneumoniae strains isolated from patients with pneumonia by capsular serotyping, multi-locus sequence typing, and whole genome sequencing.RESULTS:
Shipyard workers with Streptococcus pneumoniae pneumonia were more frequently from Italy (P = 0.016), had at least one underlying condition (P = 0.024), lived on-board the ship (P = 0.009). None of these factors was independent by multivariate analysis. While capsular serotyping enabled us to identify four different serotypes 4 (n = 5), 8 (n = 2), 9 N (n = 1), and 3 (n = 1), by sequence typing, we distinguished five sequence types (STs) ST801 (n = 4), ST205 (n = 2), ST1220 (n = 1), ST1280 (n = 1), and ST66 (n = 1). Whole genome sequencing confirmed the results obtained by MLST. Genomes of isolates of the same sequence type were similar with ≤80 single-nucleotide polymorphisms.CONCLUSIONS:
We confirmed that the onset of pneumococcal infection among shipyard workers was attributable to both a person-to-person spread of single strains of S. pneumoniae and a shift of different strains from commensal to pathogen under favourable conditions (professional exposure, viral infections). Control measures should therefore be implemented by taking into account these features.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Pneumococcal Infections
/
Pneumonia, Pneumococcal
Type of study:
Observational study
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Travel Med Infect Dis
Journal subject:
Communicable Diseases
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
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