Communications Director, Connecticut Hospital Association
110 Barnes Road, Wallingford, CT
rall@chime.org, 203-265-7611
CT Insider – Tuesday, October 29, 2024
By Jordan Nathaniel Fenster
The bacteria that causes walking pneumonia is spreading rapidly, and though it’s usually a less severe infection than other respiratory infections, Connecticut hospitals have seen a few instances of frightening side effects.
Doctors in Connecticut and around the country are seeing a significant increase in cases of walking pneumonia this year, and among younger children than usual. The infection caused by the bacteria mycoplasma is called “walking pneumonia” because while it makes you sick, it’s not so debilitating that an infected person might stay home, in bed.
“It’s called walking pneumonia, because generally, people feel well and so they can go out and about, kind of live their lives,” said Scott Roberts, associate medical director of infection prevention at Yale New Haven Hospital. “A lot of times, the challenge with walking pneumonia from a transmission standpoint, is that you feel well, so you’re going out to events and seeing people, and you’re in close contact because you don’t feel that sick where you need to stay home.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned recently of an uptick in walking pneumonia, but it’s acting a little differently than usual. It’s normally a pediatric illness, but where usually found in older children, aged 5 and up, this outbreak is impacting younger kids.
Between March 31 and Oct. 5, there was an increase in walking pneumonia diagnoses in all age groups, but the percentage increased from 1 percent to 7.2 percent among children aged between 2 and 4 years, according to the CDC.
It’s “notable,” the CDC said, because mycoplasma “historically hasn’t been recognized as a leading cause of pneumonia in this age group.”
“We have seen a very large increase over the last, I’d say, three to four months,” said Ian Michelow, head of infectious diseases and immunology at Connecticut Children’s. “The fact that it’s gone up in itself is not too surprising. But I’d say the rate at which it’s gone up this year compared with other times when there’s been an outbreak is definitely higher.”
Michelow said mycoplasma tends to run in cycles of up to seven years but, when the outbreak is as significant as it is this year, “we also see other complications of this infection,” associated with the body’s immune response to the infection.
Those complications have included multiple infections, encephalitis, “and children who may be what we call encephalopathic, decreased level of consciousness,” Michelow said. “We’ve also seen a fair number of children who’ve had complications in their mouths and their eyes and the skin.”
Though Michelow stressed that those complications are rare and that most walking pneumonia infections are mild, what he’s seeing in the hospital is “the tip of the iceberg.”
“It’s a tiny fraction of all the large number of children who may have mild infections and are in the community that don’t need to come into the hospital,” he said.
The milder symptoms of walking pneumonia are much like other respiratory diseases, which can make it difficult to diagnose, Roberts said, though it is, usually, easily treatable.
“Azithromycin really nips it in the bud, and is really one of the common prescriptions at this time of the year because of that walking pneumonia, mycoplasma concern,” he said.
Michelow said if a case is mild, there may be no reason to treat it as the symptoms may present themselves after the infection has run its course.
“That’s why these kids linger for weeks with symptoms like coughing or wheezing,” he said. “By then, it’s too late to treat it and you’re dealing with the after effects, and it runs its course. You don’t have necessarily bad outcomes at all. It just takes time, unfortunately, and it’s spreading like wildfire in the community.”