BACKGROUND Recent epidemiologic data suggest that the prevalence of macrolide resistant Mycoplasma pneumoniae (MR-M. pneumoniae) is increasing rapidly worldwide. This study assessed the present status of M. pneumoniae infection in Japan and clinical end-points to distinguish children with MR-M. pneumoniae. METHODS During an outbreak of M. pneumoniae infections in Fukuoka, Japan in 2010-11, a ...

BACKGROUND Klebsiella pneumoniae is the major cause of community-acquired pyogenic infections in Taiwan. This retrospective study evaluated the clinical and microbiological characteristics of bacteremic community-acquired pneumonia due to K. pneumoniae in Taiwanese adults. METHODS The clinical characteristics of bacteremic community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in adults due to K. pneumoniae were...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Although the hepatobiliary manifestations of Mycoplasma pneumoniae infection have been described in several previous studies, controversies still remain. The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical characteristics of patients with M. pneumoniae-related hepatitis and compare to those with M. pneumoniae infection but not hepatitis. METHODS We reviewed the medical chart of...

Although Chlamydia pneumoniae is an important human pathogen, the antigens eliciting a specific humoral immune response remain elusive. We scrutinized several recombinant chlamydial surface proteins for species-specific recognition by a panel of human sera previously tested for the presence of anti-C. pneumoniae and anti-C. trachomatis antibodies by microimmunofluorescence and enzyme-linked imm...

The prevalence of Mycoplasma pneumoniae among HIV-positive patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) remains unclear. We investigated 300 HIV-positive adults (200 with CAP and 100 with no respiratory illness) and 75 HIV-negative adults with CAP for the prevalence of respiratory pathogens using culture and serology. A growth inhibition test was employed to confirm the isolates of M. pneum...

BACKGROUND The spectrum of neurologic disease attributable to Mycoplasma pneumoniae in children is incompletely understood in part because of limitations of microbiologic diagnostic methods. Our objective was to characterize the neurologic complications of M. pneumoniae in children using stringent diagnostic criteria. METHODS All children admitted to the Hospital for Sick Children over a 16-y...

Chlamydia pneumoniae infection has been linked with atherosclerosis. However, the mechanism responsible for the atherogenic effects of C pneumoniae remains unclear. Heat shock proteins (HSPs) have been found in atherosclerotic lesions. HSPs of HSP70 and HSP90 families are involved in the regulation of cell cycle progression and cell proliferation. We assessed the hypothesis that HSP60 is induce...

The relationship of mucoviscosity-associated (magA) and/or regulator of mucoid phenotype (rmpA) genes to the Klebsiella pneumoniae hypermucoviscosity (HMV) phenotype has been reported. We previously demonstrated that rmpA+ K. pneumoniae can cause serious disease in African green monkeys and isolated rmpA+ and magA+ HMV K. pneumoniae from other species of non-human primates. To rapidly screen Af...

The incidence of community-acquired pneumonia due to Chlamydia pneumoniae was evaluated in a 1-year prospective study of 236 hospitalized patients with 237 manifestations of pneumonia. The microbiological diagnosis was based on results of cultures of blood and sputum or bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and results of complement fixation tests and indirect immunofluorescence of acute- and convalesce...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE All studies reporting high numbers of Chlamydia pneumoniae DNA positives in stroke patients published to date have used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques highly prone to generate false-positive results. The aim of this study was to analyze the prevalence of C. pneumoniae DNA in plaques of the carotid artery as well as in peripheral blood by means of a new, closed...