Mycoplasma pneumoniae at the rise not only in China: rapid increase of Mycoplasma pneumoniae cases also in Spain

Le résumé fourni par la source

After the use of facemasks, other isolation measures enacted during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic were lifted, respiratory pathogens, such as RSV, reappeared, but until the November 2023 WHO alert for China, M. pneumoniae had virtually disappeared.After observing a similar reappearance in our hospital, a retrospective analysis of the number of positive M. pneumoniae tests.Between 2018 and December 2023, 1619 PCR tests were ordered and 43 (2.6%) of them were positive.Two outbreaks, one in 2018 and one in 2023, accounted for the majority of cases.Tests were usually ordered in an outpatient setting (53.54%, n = 23) and most of them were paediatric patients with a mean age (sd) of 10.2 (6.2) years.As for the severity of the cases, in the 2018 outbreak, of 15 children who tested positive, 53.3% (n = 8) were admitted to the ward and 6.7% (n = 1) at the intensive care unit.Whereas in 2023, 2 patients were tested in the ward (10.5%) and one in the intensive care unit (5.2%) from a total of 19 patients.The positive rate in 2023 was significantly higher in comparison with years 2020, 2021 and 2022 and significantly lower in comparison with 2018 (P-value=0.003).The outbreak in late 2023 can be explained by the seasonality of Mycoplasma pneumonia alone, which has shown outbreaks every 3-5 years, and it does not appear to be more severe than the previous one.

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