Streptococcus pneumoniae is carried asymptomatically in the nasopharyngeal tract. However, it is capable of causing multiple diseases, including pneumonia, bacteraemia and meningitis, which are common causes of morbidity and mortality in young children. Antibiotic treatment has become more difficult, especially that involving the group of beta-lactam antibiotics where resistance has developed rapidly. The organism is known to be highly recombinogenic, and this allows variants conferring beta-lactam resistance to be readily introduced into the genome.
