Walking Pneumonia on the Rise: What to Know About the Cough That Won’t Quit
Walking pneumonia is a type of pneumonia that causes a persistent cough that lasts for weeks and can be difficult to treat. This type of pneumonia is caused by tiny bacteria called Mycoplasma pneumoniae. The CDC recently issued a bulletin alerting parents and doctors about the surge in cases.
It’s very much been on our radar since early summer when we started to see a remarkable increase in the number of kids with pneumonia who seemed to have this particular type of pneumonia,” said Dr. Buddy Creech, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “They wanted advice because their go-to antibiotic for pneumonia – amoxicillin – didn’t seem to be working in these cases.
The pneumonia is caused by tiny Mycoplasma pneumoniae bacteria and cases are spiking this year, particularly among preschool-age children, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which sent a bulletin alerting parents and doctors to the uptick last week.
Mycoplasma pneumonia is the latest entry on a growing list of lung infections keeping doctors on their toes this fall. Whooping cough, or pertussis, cases – which also cause a prolonged cough – are five times higher than they were at this time last year, and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, is also rising in parts of the US.
In the past, it’s been tough to test for Mycoplasma. It’s not a germ that likes to grow in a dish, which is the standard, if slow way to test for bacterial infections.
Now, Creech says, better diagnostic tests are making it easier to detect these bacteria more quickly and reliably. With so many germs making kids cough this fall, it’s crucial that doctors use these tests to get the right diagnosis, he said.
“This is the exact time where we need to be using these diagnostic tests that can guide treatment,” he said.
Awareness of the Mycoplasma trend is important, the CDC says, since antibiotics for kids like amoxicillin and penicillin don’t kill this type of bacteria. The infection is usually easily treated with other antibiotics, such as azithromycin.
According to the CDC, which monitors discharge data from a network of hospitals as well as test results from commercial labs, the number of children ages 2 through 4 who were seen in the ER for pneumonia and who tested positive for Mycoplasma increased from 1% in April 24 to 7.2% in early October, a 700% increase. Diagnoses in older kids doubled over the same time frame.
The CDC said Mycoplasma cases seem to have peaked in mid-August, but they remain high. Creech said he expects they will continue to be high for another month or so, then should begin to off later into the fall.
On an X-ray, Mycoplasma infections can give lungs a cloudy or “white lung appearance.
Last year, China, Denmark and France all reported increases of this type of pneumonia in kids.
The reason for the in cases is likely due to at least three factors, said Dr. Geoffrey Weinberg, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center. The rst is that rates of Mycoplasma infections are returning to where they were before the Covid-19 pandemic.
It seems very dramatic now, but it’s more because during the peak of the Covid pandemic, just about everything else went down. “But the actual countrywide rates are fairly similar to what it was before 2
The second reason is that most infections cycle, so some years are worse than others. Doctors tend to see spikes of Mycoplasma pneumonia every3 to 7 years, as people lose their immunity to the virus, Creech said.
Sometimes you just have a bad year, combined with not noticing it for a while, now we’re getting it more, he added.amp;
The third reason is that doctors have more advanced tests – called multiplex tests that can check for multiple and bacteria at the same time, so it could be that this infection is just getting picked up more often.
Mycoplasma infections are bacteria that travel through droplets. People catch them when they’re near another person’s coughs and
Mycoplasma infections start off pretty generically, with a headache, a sore throat, a low and chills. People often feel but can still around, hence the term “walking pneumonia.
The is typically a dry cough, without phlegm. It starts gradually and slowly over a period of2 to3 weeks, becoming a
Not everyone who gets a Mycoplasma infection will need treatment. Weinberg says that as many kids and young adults will get over it without any
Sometimes, however, can the infection will cases, such as and make people seriously ill.
Rarely, these germs can outside the lungs. They can the lining of the and the, as well as the ones that for the
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