AUTHOR=Ruan Jinping , Fu Zhou , Ying Linyan 

TITLE=Clinical differences between Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia and Streptococcus pneumoniae pneumonia: a case control study

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Pediatrics

VOLUME=Volume 12 - 2024

YEAR=2024

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/pediatrics/articles/10.3389/fped.2024.1409687

DOI=10.3389/fped.2024.1409687

ISSN=2296-2360

ABSTRACT=Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia (MPP) and Streptococcus pneumoniae pneumonia (SPP) are common causes of respiratory tract infection, the study aimed to explore the differences in clinical features between children with MPP and those with SPP. 506 patients with MPP were compared to 311 patients with SPP in terms of clinical differences. The MPP group with a median age of 60 [29-89] months and the SPP group with a median age of 24 [10-40] months.Patients with MPP were older and had a higher occurrence of receiving antibiotics before admission, fever, dry cough, polypnea, and diarrhea than patients with SPP (all p<0.01).Patients with SPP were more likely to have wheezing, cyanosis and irritability (all p<0.01).Laboratory findings in our study showed that there were significant differences between MPP and SPP patients in mean leucocyte count, neutrophil % (N%), lymphocyte % (L%), ALT levels, AST levels, LDH levels, and incidence of accelerated procalcitonin (PCT) (all p<0.01). Lower age, no dry cough, no polypnea, lower LDH levels, and higher PCT might lead to the diagnosis of SPP. Our study showed that age had a higher accuracy in predicting MPP than LDH levels, with an age>48.5 months shown to be an independent predictive factor for the early evaluation and identification of MPP. In conclusion, patients with MPP and SPP usually present with fever, cough, and some nonspecific symptoms. Our study showed that age, dry cough, polypnea, LDH levels, and PCT levels were independent predictive factors associated with MPP and SPP.