Evaluation of demographic, clinical data and antibiotic susceptibility results in patients with group B streptococcal infection

Group B streptococci (GBS) are considered as an important public health problem due to neonatal and invasive infections they cause. Demographic screening of patients and determining antibiotic susceptibility profiles of GBS isolates will provide useful information for prevention and treatment of those infections. In this study, it was aimed to retrospectively evaluate the demografic and clinical data of 89 patients who admitted to Ankara City Hospital between 2019-2020, and to determine antimicrobial susceptibility profiles of GBS isolates that obtained from their samples. Sixty-one (61%) of the patients were female and twenty-eight (31%) of the patients were male. The samples that obtained from those patients were urine (43%), wound (23%), vaginal swab (16%), DTA (5%), tissue (2%), blood (2%), BAL (1%) and synovial fluid (1%). Fourty-three (48%) of the patients had underlying conditions for GBS infection/colonization which were diabetes (11%), hypertension (8%), atherosclerotic heart diseases (6%), neoplasms (5%) and other diseases. The average age was 44 ± 13 in female patients, 52 ± 12 in male patients and 47 ± 13 in all patients. Percentage of GBS growth in female patients was higher than male patients (p<0.05). The antibiotics with the highest resistance observed were tetracycline (86%), levofloxacin (44%) and erythromycin (44%). Erythromycin resistance seen in levofloxacin resistant isolates was statistically significant, compared to levofloxacin susceptible isolates (p<0.05). There are studies reporting reduced penicillin susceptibility and macrolide resistance in fluoroquinolone resistant isolates. Further studies are required to determine the mechanisms of erythromycin resistance observed with levofloxacin resistance and to accurately detect reduced penicillin susceptibility. Key Words: GBS, Streptococcus agalactiae, Antimicrobial susceptibility, Demographic data, GBS infection