Children who have coughs that go on for weeks may have a type of walking pneumonia that’s been surging in the U.S. this year, and they may need a different antibiotic regimen to treat it, infectious disease experts say.
“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. Creech says that on the same day in August, four Nashville-area pediatricians reached out to him to ask why so many kids were coughing in the summertime.
These doctors wanted advice, he says, 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 U.S.
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 difficult to test for Mycoplasma.