Mycoplasma Pneumoniae IgM antibody

Medical condition:

M. pneumoniae is a common cause of upper respiratory infections. It is in charge of for 15-20% of cases of community-acquired pneumonia, appearing as single cases and as periodic epidemics, especially in school-age children (2-12 years) with 80% of adults being seropositive for IGG and in military populations or other settings where people live in close quarters. Infections can occur at any time of the year, but outbreaks are more prevalent in the late summer and early fall.

Most cases of M. pneumoniae infection are mild and self-limited, causing nonspecific symptoms such as bronchitis, headache, a runny nose, feeling tired and a nonproductive cough that may persist for several weeks. Symptoms may become more severe, causing fever with chills, shortness of breath, chest pain sore throat, headaches, and muscle aches, when the infection spreads to the lower respiratory tract and causes "walking pneumonia," or, more rarely, spreads to other parts of the body. This is especially true in very young infants, those who have underlying health conditions, such as asthma, or compromised immune systems, such as those with HIV/AIDS. Depending upon what parts of the body become infected, complications may range from meningitis to difficulty breathing, cardiac inflammation and arrhythmia, skin rashes, lesions or nodules, arthritis, anemia, or Guillain-Barré syndrome.

There are other pathogenic species too like Mycoplasma hominis, Mycoplasma genitalium, and Ureaplasma​urealyticum. The infections with these species are less common than those seen with M. pneumoniae. In adults, these organisms are primarily sexually transmitted, causing nongonococcal urethritis (NGU) and some inflammation of the prostate (prostatitis) in men and sometimes associated with vaginal discharge and pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) in women. M. hominis and U. urealyticum can be passed from mother to baby during birth when the baby passes through an infected birth canal. They typically colonize infants for their first couple of years. Rarely, they can cause systemic infections in infants and those with compromised immune systems.