Molecular Diagnosis of Atypical Pneumonia Infection in Children Presenting with Acute Respiratory Tract Infection Attending Yangon Children’s Hospital

Acute respiratory tract infection (ARI) is a clinical condition which causes high morbidity and mortality, especially in infants and young children. Pneumonia is a common complication of respiratory tract infection. Atypical pneumonia, which is commonly caused by Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Chlamydophila pneumoniae and Legi-onella pneumophila, is difficult to be detected because the causal bacteria cannot be diagnosed by routine culture method and presenting with non-specific clinical symptoms. This study aimed to diagnose the atypical pneumonia infection in children presenting with ARI attending Yangon Children’s Hospital during 2014-15 by using multiplex polymerase chain reaction (M-PCR). The bacterial DNA was extracted from nasopharyngeal swab samples by using Qiagen DNA minikit and detected by M-PCR. Of 245 patients with ARI, 140(57%) were males and 105(43%) were females. Eleven samples (4.4%) were positive for atypical pneumonia infection, among which 4(1.6%) were Mycoplasma pneumoniae,5(2%) were Chlamydophila pneumoniae and 2(0.8%) were Legionella pneumophila. The atypical pneumonia cases were mostly seen among the age of 1 to 5 years and sex distribution was nearly equal. The infected cases were detected from pneumonia (36.4%), severe pneumonia (27.3%), viral-induced wheeze (18.2%), severe bronchiolitis (9.1%) and bronchiolitis (9.1%). This study highlights the role of atypical pneumonia infection in ARI cases among children.