Ying-Jen Lu¹, Tou-Hwei Chen¹, Lung-Huang Lin¹, Chung-Min Shen¹, Ceng-Hua Huang²
Departments of ¹Pediatrics and ²Infection, Cathay General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan

Received: May 12, 2007     Revised: June 12, 2007     Accepted: July 26, 2007

Corresponding author: Dr. Lung-Huang Lin, Department of Pediatrics, Cathay General Hospital, College of Medicine, Fu-Jen Catholic University, Taipei, Taiwan. E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Background and Purpose: Mycoplasma pneumoniae infection is a major cause of community-acquiredrespiratory tract infection in children. We performed a retrospective study to evaluate clinical and demographic data and compare outcomes with and without macrolide treatment in children with M. pneumoniae infection.

Methods: A total of 139 patients were included in the study and classified into two groups according to whether or not they received macrolide therapy during hospitalization. Data collected included demographic, clinical and laboratory characteristics.

Results: Cases were most prevalent during September. Fever and cough were the most common presenting symptoms/signs. The time to fever subsidence did not differ significantly between azithromycin and erythromycin usage. We also found significantly longer fever duration in the group without macrolideusage.

Conclusions: Treatment with macrolide shortens fever duration of M. pneumoniae infection in children.

Key words: Agglutinins; Azithromycin; Erythromycin; Immunoglobulin M; Mycoplasma pneumoniae

J Microbiol Immunol Infect. 2008;41:307-310.