The Seropositivity Rate of Atypical Agents in Patients with Community-Acquired Pneumonia -

The aim of this study was to investigate the IgM antibody positivities of atypical pneumonia agents in patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), and to compare the results with controls. The serum samples which were collected from 87 adult patients and 21 healthy controls have been investigated by a commercial ELISA (Pneumobact ELISA IgM, Vircell, Spain) in which four different atypical pneumonia agents were fixed onto a slide. In the patients group, IgM positivity rates for the agents were as follows, respectively; 2.3% for Legionella pneumophila, 56.3% Chlamydia pneumoniae, 33.3% for Mycoplasma pneumoniae, 9.2% for Coxiella burnetii. The rates of IgM positivities in the control group varied 7% for all of the agents except M. Pneumoniae and C. Pneumoniae and 2 of these controls were positive for L. Pneumophila IgM, one was positive for C. Burnetii IgM. According to the statistical evaluation, there were significant differences for IgM seropositivities to Mycoplasma pneumoniae and Chlamydia Pneumoniae,between the patient and the control groups (p0.05). We showed that the seropositivity rate of atypical agents in patients with CAP was significantly higher when compared to healthy control group. This result suggests us, atypical agents might be responsible in CAP patients in a great amount. Furthermore, our study also suggests that clinical and radiological findings are not useful for discriminating atypical from typical pneumonia.