Group B streptococcus (GBS) is the leading cause of invasive neonatal disease in the developed world. Intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis is currently the only modality for prevention of GBS disease. In Slovenia, prophylaxis is administered based on the presence of risk factors. Several genotypic methods are available for studying the relationships between isolates and the genetic structure of bacterial population. The two most widely used are multilocus sequence typing and whole genome sequencing (WGS), which enable us to classify bacterial isolates into sequence types (ST), which cluster into clonal complexes (CC). Recently, CRISPR method has been studied as a possible tool for typing and subtyping. An increase in the incidence of neonatal disease caused by the hypervirulent GBS serotype III ST-17 has been described in recent years. Polysaccharide capsule is the main virulent factor of GBS. Based on the capsular antigen, GBS can be divided into ten distinct serotypes. However, a variety of other virulent factors have been implicated in the development of colonisation and invasive disease, such as pili, Alp family proteins, C5a peptidase, Lmb, Fbs, Srr and Bib. Virulent factors of the hypervirulent clone GBS ST-17 include HvgA and Srr-2, which confer meningeal tropism. The problem of GBS disease as well as phenotypic and genotypic characteristics of GBS isolates in Slovenia are not well studied. Our research aimed to phenotypically and genotypically compare invasive and colonising GBS isolates and determine a baseline GBS population characteristics before the implementation of universal screening.
114 invasive GBS isolates and 71 colonising isolates were analysed for basic clinical characteristics, antimicrobial susceptibility and capsular serotype. WGS was performed to assign ST and CC, virulent factors and phylogeny. CRISPR was performed for typing.
Among invasive isolates, 41.6 % and 58.4 % were responsible for early onset (EOD) and late onset (LOD) disease, respectively. All isolates were susceptible to penicillin. Overall, 7 serotypes were identified (Ia, Ib, II-V and VIII), serotype III being the most common (60 %). 29 STs were detected that were grouped into 6 CCs. CC-17 was predominant among both invasive and colonising isolates with 67.3 % and 32.9 %, respectively (p
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