'Walking pneumonia' cases on the rise in Quebec

It’s called “walking pneumonia” and Dr. Earl Rubin said it’s becoming an issue with hospitals seeing more and more of it.

The division director of infectious disease at the Montreal Children’s Hospital (the Children’s) said that mycoplasma pneumoniae (walking pneumonia) is the most frequent cause of community-acquired pneumonia in school age children, adolescents and adults, but that doctors are now seeing it in younger preschool age children.

“We didn't see that very commonly before, and we're also seeing more complicated disease, because mycoplasma can affect multiple systems, and in addition, it can cause more severe pneumonia, and we've been seeing that as well,” said Rubin.

The American Centers for Disease Control said recently that mycoplasma pneumoniae cases have been increasing since the spring in children between two and four years old. The CDC is currently trying to raise awareness of the disease among health-care providers.

Rubin said that typical walking pneumonia cases improve without treatment, but that recently doctors are seeing children whose condition does not improve and gets progressively worse.

“And some getting admitted to hospital with more severe pneumonia, so it's becoming a diagnostic dilemma, treatment dilemma, for a lot of the community, pediatricians and family docs, as well as in our emergency room, of whether or not we should be thinking about it outside of the typical age ranges, whether we should be treating it. So it's causing a lot of discussion,” he said.

Rubin is hoping Quebec health-care providers will consider that the virus is spreading outside of the typical five to 17-year-old age range and do chest x-rays to find the appropriate antibiotic for treatment.

“The other thing about mycoplasma that is very interesting is that there is a very long incubation period, meaning from the time coming in contact to getting symptoms can be up to a month,” said Rubin. “So when people ask, Have you recently been in touch with in contact with anybody who's sick, people won't remember. It could be from a month ago.”

He added that there is a high “attack rate” in households and that about one in three people will catch the virus.

“Those who get it, about one quarter will develop pneumonia and need treatment,” he said. “And it's known to cause outbreaks.”