PLoS ONE (Jan 2017)

Evaluation of a real-time method of simultaneous amplification and testing in diagnosis of Mycoplasma pneumoniae infection in children with pneumonia.

  • Wei Li,
  • You-Hong Fang,
  • Hong-Qiang Shen,
  • De-Hua Yang,
  • Qiang Shu,
  • Shi-Qiang Shang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0177842
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 5
p. e0177842

Abstract

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Mycoplasma pneumoniae (M. pneumoniae) infection can cause community acquired pneumonia in children. A real-time method of simultaneous amplification and testing of M. pneumoniae (SAT-MP) was developed to diagnose M. pneumoniae targeting a region of the ribosomal RNA. The SAT-MP assay can accurately identify M. pneumoniae with a detection range from 101 to 107 CFU/ml. In this study, the specimens from 315 children with pneumonia were collected and analyzed by SAT-MP in parallel with real-time PCR method and IgM ELISA assay. The positive rates of these specimens examined by SAT-MP assay, real-time PCR method and IgM ELISA assay were 16.51%, 15.56% and 12.70% respectively. While there was statistical significance (p = 0.04) between SAT-MP assay and IgM ELISA assay, no statistical significance (p = 0.25) was found between SAT-MP assay and real-time PCR method and these two methods had high consistency (kappa value = 0.97). These findings indicate that the newly developed SAT-MP assay is a rapid, sensitive and specific method for identifying M. pneumoniae with potential clinical application in the early diagnosis of M. pneumoniae infection.