Abstract

The streptococcal infections have become less frequent and less potent compared to those in the era of preantibiotics, but they still remain to be important in our clinical medicine as some of them result in rheumatic fever or acute glomerulonephritis. Appropriate bacterioogical studies would be of great value to aid the diagnosis, to guide the therapy and to prevent the sequelae. This paper will present some of the bacteriological studies related to streptococcal strains isolated from clinical materials at Yonsei Medical Center during the period of January 1976 to February 1977. 1. A total of 102 strains of group A was isolated. Specimens most frequently yielded group A streptococcus were pub, 43 or 42.2%, and throat culture, 24 or 23.5%. Blood culture yielded 8 or 7.8% and spinal fluid 2 or 2%. 2. As to the age group there were no particular relationship except for a decreasing frequency after the age of 40. 3. Isolation by month showed that group A streptococcus were most frequently isolated during the months of January to March, and August to November. 4. Excluding enterococci, there were a total of 117 bacitracin resistant strains; and these were presumptively identified as other than group A. Among these, 42 isolates were tested by capillary precipitation method to identify 6 of group A, 1 of B, 2 of C and 2 of G. 5. Some of the patients who yielded streptococcus other than group A had underlying diseases which were assumed to be the cause of the infections. 6. When streptococcus other than group A were isolated from either throat or sputum, only in a few patients those streptococci were predominant organisms; and it was hard to assume them as the causative organisms in rest of the patients.