Chaudhry Rama, Tabassum Irum, Kapoor Lata, Chhabra Anjolie, Sharma Nidhi, Broor Shobha
Department of Microbiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 110 029, India.
Indian J Pathol Microbiol. 2010 Jul-Sep;53(3):555-7. doi: 10.4103/0377-4929.68283.
Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) caused by mycoplasmas is very rare. This report describes a severe case of atypical pneumonia due to M. pneumoniae in a formerly healthy young woman who developed high grade fever and cough leading to severe disseminated lung disease and finally to fatal ARDS. This case came into picture when killer atypical pneumonia, namely, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), spread very fast from South-Asian countries to the rest of the world. Moreover, the clinical presentation and radiologic features of SARS bear resemblance to the syndrome of atypical pneumonia, which lead us to investigate this case into detail. We suggest that M. pneumoniae infections should be included in the differential diagnosis of pathogens causing ARDS, establishing an early diagnosis may have important therapeutic implications.
支原体引起的急性呼吸窘迫综合征（ARDS）非常罕见。本报告描述了一名既往健康的年轻女性因肺炎支原体感染导致的严重非典型肺炎病例，该患者出现高热和咳嗽，进而发展为严重的播散性肺部疾病，最终导致致命的ARDS。此病例出现在致命性非典型肺炎即严重急性呼吸综合征（SARS）从南亚国家迅速传播到世界其他地区之时。此外，SARS的临床表现和影像学特征与非典型肺炎综合征相似，这促使我们对该病例进行详细调查。我们建议，在导致ARDS的病原体鉴别诊断中应包括肺炎支原体感染，早期诊断可能具有重要的治疗意义。
