Study on the co-infection of children with severe community-acquired pneumonia.

Backgroud: Pneumonia is one of the leading causes of death in children under 5 years old. Viruses have historically been the most common cause of community-acquired pneumonia in children. Co-infections in severe pneumonia are more concern by clinicians.

Method: It was a perspective and descriptive study. Real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is a modern test that was used to detect many new pathogens, including microbiological co-infections. RT-PCR technique was used in this study to investigate the causes of severe pneumonia.

Results: Through the analysis of nasopharyngeal aspiration samples from 95 children with severe community-acquired pneumonia, the positive RT-PCR rate was 90.5%. Viral-bacterial co-infection accounted for the highest proportion (43.1%), followed by bacterial co-infection (33.7%), viral infection (7.4%), bacterial infection (6.3%) and the remaining 9.5% was unknown. In the co-infections groups, the five main bacteria species detected by PCR were Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, MRSA, Moraxella catarrhalis and Mycoplasma pneumoniae.

Conclusion: Antibiotic treatment should focus on detected microbes in cases of severe pneumonia for having a good result.