Recently, with the high incidence of respiratory illness in winter, China, Denmark, France, and the Netherlands have all reported an increase in cases of pneumonia in children associated with Mycoplasma pneumoniae, as well as a surge in cases in the United States, including Ohio.
Last week, experts in Europe released a report that their mycoplasma surveillance at 45 sites in 24 countries found that mycoplasma infections began to rise at the beginning of the year, while the incidence rate during the outbreak was less than 1%.
According to a global report published in The Lancet Microbiology, mycoplasma infections have increased more than fourfold on average this summer and autumn, with greater increases in Asia and Europe.
Experts have previously stated that mycoplasma, as a common known pathogen, occurs in periodic epidemics every few years, especially in school-age children aged 5 to 12 years.
Mycoplasma pneumonia is an atypical form of pneumonia and is also known as "walking pneumonia", which usually causes a cough that lasts for several weeks, accompanied by fever and headache, and sometimes a rash.
However, this year, compared with the previous mycoplasma pneumonia infection, most of which were mainly mild, many hospitalized children** did not have cough symptoms, but had a high fever and formed lung nodules, which caused the vigilance of experts. Spain** has recently issued a special reminder for this "walking pneumonia".
According to preliminary data published by the World Health Organization's Emerging Disease Surveillance Project (PROMED), although the symptoms of mycoplasma pneumonia infection may be mild at first, complications, especially for vulnerable groups such as children, can progress to severe infection.
However, a domestic clinical expert in infectious diseases told the first financial reporter: "Judging from the current performance of mycoplasma pneumonia, this year still cannot be regarded as a typical pneumonia. ”
Another director of the Department of Infectious Diseases also told the first financial reporter: "At present, we have not encountered many mycoplasma infection with typical pneumonia, and there are multiple manifestations of mycoplasma infection, and the clinical manifestations of different groups of people are different, which can be manifested as asymptomatic, upper respiratory tract infection, pneumonia or carriers." ”
Experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believe that resistance to antibiotics used for mycoplasma pneumonia infection may be a reason for the increase in cases in China. This is because antibiotics are generally used for common pneumonia infection**, and as long as the patient gets better after taking the drug, there is no need to do too much testing, but if the antibiotic is resistant, it is necessary to continue to further identify the specific pathogen of the infection through testing, so as to use the drug more targetedly.
Data show that in Beijing, Mycoplasma pneumoniae resistance to the most common macrolide drugs reached 70% to 90%, and drug resistance can stop the process of ** and affect the recovery process of patients. Macrolide antimicrobials include azithromycin, clarithromycin, erythromycin, roxithromycin, and acetylguitarycin.
The resistance rate of mycoplasma to macrolides in China has been very high, and tetracyclines or fluoroquinolones should be switched to after drug resistance. Wang Xinyu, deputy director of the Department of Infectious Diseases of Huashan Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University, told the first financial reporter.