Trends and geographical variation in invasive pneumococcal infections in Finland.

We evaluated regional variation and trends in invasive pneumococcal infections (IPI) in Finland by using data from national, population-based laboratory surveillance and number of blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) cultures performed by all microbiology laboratories during 1995–2002. The overall annualized IPI incidence was 10.6/100,000 (range by region, 7.9–15.1): 9.9 for bacteraemias (range 7.3–14.2) and 0.6 for meningitis (range 0.4–1.1). The rate in children aged<5 y was 23.5/100,000. Regional pneumococcal bacteraemia rates were correlated with blood culture sampling rates (p=0.015), but meningitis rates did not correlate with CSF culture rates. During 1995–2002, the overall annual IPI rate increased by 35.1%, from 8.2 to 11.5/100,000 (p<0.001). The annual blood culturing rate increased by 29.6% (p=0.015 for the correlation with IPI rate). Temporal increase and higher regional IPI rates were significantly associated with higher blood culturing rates. Pneumococcal serotypes included in the 7- and 10-v...