[Epidemiology of meningitis, pneumonia and acute otitis due to Streptococcus pneumoniae in pediatric in Italy]

Streptococcus pneumoniae is one of the most important bacterial pathogens in pediatrics, both from a quantitative and from a qualitative point of view. It can cause severe diseases such as occult bacteremia, sepsis, meningitis and it is also involved in the determination of a relevant part of very common illnesses such as pneumonia, acute otitis media and rhinosinusitis. However, most of the data regarding the epidemiology of pneumococcal infections in pediatrics have been collected in the U.S.A. and in other industrialized Countries different from Italy. In Italy only studies concerning meningitis and the carrier state of pneumococcus are at the moment available. They indicate that also in Italy S. pneumoniae seems to play a significant role in the determination of several pediatric diseases and that quite similar are the group of serotypes mainly involved in the determination of both invasive and not invasive diseases.