Small Risk of Osteoarticular Infections in Children With Asymptomatic Oropharyngeal Carriage of Kingella Kingae

Oropharyngeal Kingella kingae carriage in children: characteristics and correlation with osteoarticular infections

“…Our results showed no correlation between prevalence of K. kingae carriage and OAI incidence. We previously demonstrated a constant bacterial load among asymptomatic carriers throughout the first 4 y of life (17), although the OAI incidence greatly changes; and the absolute risk for asymptomatic carriers to sustain an invasive OAI is below 1% (29). Like most infectious diseases, OAI represents a confluence of agent, host and environment, and although K. kingae carriage is clearly involved in pathogenesis, disease only occurs in the presence of other factors not yet identified (8).…”

30 years of study of Kingella kingae: post tenebras, lux

“…A recent study demonstrated that the probability for asymptomatic children carrying K. kingae in the oropharynx to develop an OAI due to this pathogen is lower that 1%. Oropharyngeal carriage of K. kingae does not imply the subsequent development of invasive infection, but suggests that other cofactors may play a role in the pathogenesis of invasive K. kingae infections [32].…”

“…The carriage rate among children less than 4 years of age and older children is approximately 10 and 6%, respectively. The colonization rate is probably largest between the ages of 12-24 months, reaching 9-12% [27,[32][33][34]. There are no sex differences in the rate of carriage of K. kingae (Box 1) [27].…”

“…Since the 1980s, the reported number of cases of K. kingae OAIs has markedly increased, mainly owing to improvements in culture techniques [16,[71][72][73][74][75][76] and to the utilization of molecular methods [32,[51][52][53][54][55][77][78][79][80][81]. Many studies have thus demonstrated that K. kingae has become the major bacterial cause of OAIs in children aged between 6 and 48 months; this microorganism is currently recognized to account for 30-93.8% of all culture-positive OAIs [18,32,[51][52][53][54]77].…”

“…Many studies have thus demonstrated that K. kingae has become the major bacterial cause of OAIs in children aged between 6 and 48 months; this microorganism is currently recognized to account for 30-93.8% of all culture-positive OAIs [18,32,[51][52][53][54]77]. However, the presentation of K. kingae OAIs is often characterized by a mild-to-moderate clinical and biologic inflammatory responses to infection, with the consequence that these children present few, if any, criteria evocative of OAIs.…”