Genotypes of invasive pneumococcal isolates recently recovered from italian patients

We examined 73 recent invasive pneumococcal isolates within selected areas of Italy for genotypic variability.Thirty-three genomic macrorestriction types were found, three of which represented multiple serotypes. Restrictionfragment patterns of pbp2b, pbp2x, and pspA were conserved within the majority of isolates that sharedmacrorestriction types. Of the nine macrorestriction types found among the 22 penicillin-nonsusceptible Streptococuspneumoniae (PNSP) isolates, seven comprised isolates with allelic profiles showing five to seven allelicmatches to profiles in the multilocus sequence typing database (www.mlst.net); however, three of the sevenprofiles represented serotypes not previously associated with these clonal clusters. Two PNSP macrorestrictiontypes represented new clones with unique allelic profiles. Allelic profiles obtained from isolates of 3 of the 25macrorestriction types found among the 51 penicillin-susceptible S. pneumoniae (PSSP) isolates were closelyrelated to previously described profiles. One PSSP isolate was a novel type 24F isolate related to the multiresistantclone France9V-3. This work reports new PNSP strains and new serotype-clone associations.