Relationship between capsular polysaccharide composition, degree of encapsulation, neutrophil-mediated killing, and prevalence.

The number of carbons or the number of high energy molecules consumed per repeat unit is associated with capsule size, resistance to neutrophil-mediated killing, and average serotype carriage frequency [17],[44],[64]. Post-PCV7 prevalence data (2004) was obtained from Hanage et al [44]. Spearman correlation coefficients are shown, †p<0.05, ††p<0.001.