The occurrence of
drug resistant Streptococcus pneurmoniae (S. pneumoniae) is very high in Japan. Unnecessary use of
antibiotics had been thought to cause this problem but previous studies had not clearly showed that the decreasing rate of
antibiotic use had been related to the reduction of the prevalence of resistant strains. In this study, we tried to prove that non-
antibiotic treatment for
common cold would reduce the
antibiotic resistant S. pneumoniae in nasopharynx in children. Forty-five children with the
common cold were randomly selected from pediatric patients who had taken
antibiotics within the past three months. We collected nasopharyngeal swabs from all of the participants and once again after a period of 2 to 3 months without using any
antibiotics. Twenty-four of these patients had the S. pneumoniae strains isolated. Then these strains were undergone a susceptibility test and
drug-resistant gene detection. The susceptibility test reveled that patients with
penicillin-resistant strains decreased from 17 to 7 (p < 0.01). The test also reveled that the decreased number of patients had strains that were resistant to cefditren. The gene detection revealed that none of the patients acquired a higher resistance to
penicillin. Our study suggests that the treatment without
antibiotics reduces the
drug-resistant S. pneumoniae. Controlled
antibiotic use in children might prevent children from carrying the
antibiotic resistant S. pneumoniae.