Background: Streptococcus pneumoniae carriage is often asymptomatic but can cause invasive pneumococcal disease. Pneumococcal carriage is a prerequisite for disease, with children as main reservoir and transmitters. Childhood carriage can therefore be used to determine which serotypes circulate in the population and which may cause disease in the non-vaccinated population. In 2006, a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7) was introduced into the Norwegian Childhood Immunisation Programme, which was replaced by the more valent PCV13 in 2011. We investigated changes in pneumococcal carriage prevalence 4 years after switching to PCV13 compared to three previous surveys, and analysed factors associated with carriage in children.
Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study in Norway, autumn 2015, among children attending day-care centres. We collected questionnaire data and nasopharyngeal swabs to identify pneumococcal serotypes. We compared the carriage prevalence in 2015 with surveys conducted in the same setting performed before widespread vaccination (2006; n = 610), 2 years after PCV7 introduction (2008; n = 600), and 2 years after switching to PCV13 (2013; n = 874). Using multilevel logistic regression we determined the association between pneumococcal carriage and previously associated factors.
Results: In 2015, 896 children participated, with age ranging from 8 to 80 months. The overall carriage prevalence was 48/100 children [95%CI 44-53] in 2015, 38% [29-46] lower than in 2006 pre-PCV7, and 23% [12-32] lower than in 2013, 2 years after switching to PCV13. The PCV13 carriage prevalence was 2.8/100 children [1.9-4.2] in 2015. Increasing age (p < 0.001), recent antimicrobial use (odds ratio = 0.42 [0.21-0.57]) and being vaccinated (odds ratio = 0.37 [0.29-0.47]) were negatively associated with carriage.
Conclusions: Our study showed a continued decrease in overall pneumococcal carriage, mainly fuelled by the decline in vaccine serotypes after vaccine introduction. Childhood vaccination with PCV13 should be continued to keep low PCV13 carriage, transmission and disease. Furthermore, the low prevalence of PCV13-type carriage in children endorse the choice of not recommending PCV13 in addition to the 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine to most medical risk groups in Norway, as little disease caused by these serotypes can be expected.
Keywords: Carriage; Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine.