Streptococcus pseudopneumoniae as an emerging pathogen from patients with respiratory diseases

Streptococcus pseudopneumoniae is a mischaracterized species of Streptococci that is usually overlooked during examination of sputum samples of patients with chest infections. The association of this organism with lower respiratory tract diseases is still unclear and its isolation and description is underestimated in our locality. To our knowledge, there are no published studies on the isolation of S. pseudopneumoniae from pathological specimens in Egypt. The aims of this study were to isolate S. pseudopneumoniae from sputum specimens of patients admitted to Chest Department of Mansoura University Hospitals (MUHs) and to differentiate it from Streptococcus pneumoniae and other viridans group Streptococci, also to determine its prevalence and associated risk factors. Sixteen isolates of S. pseudopneumoniae were diagnosed phenotypically by optochin susceptibility and bile solubility tests followed by genotypic characterization by multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR). All of the isolates were subjected to antibiotic susceptibility testing using the disk diffusion method. The prevalence of S. pseudopneumoniae among studied patients was 4.9% (16/329). All of the examined isolates were found to be positive for aliB-like ORF2 and negative for cpsA and lytA genes by multiplex PCR. Elevated resistance rate of the isolates was recorded for erythromycin, penicillin and co-trimoxazole. Infection by S. pseudopneumoniae was found to be significantly associated with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases (COPD). Although, S. pseudopneumoniae recorded a low prevalence in this study, their elevated antibiotic resistance together with the association with COPD and their pure isolation from sputum samples underline the necessity of spending more effort for their detection and characterization in the microbiology laboratories.