Across England, the number of infections caused by a family of bacteria called Streptococcus have been rising strongly for the last few years. However, the reasons behind these increases are not well understood at the moment.
We plan to use the extra information in the IORD database to look at some different reasons why these increases might be occurring. We will look at both the most severe type of infections where the bacteria gets into the blood, and also other types of infections where the bacteria gets into other parts of the body. We will explore whether the increases are confined to certain subgroups of the bacterial family, if they are happening more in hospital, outside of hospital or in patients who have been recently discharged. We will see whether the infections being reported are making patients less severely ill, to find out whether changes could just be down to how doctors are making decisions about who to test. We will also explore whether the aging population explains most of the increase, and if age effects vary between different bacterial subgroups.