Status of Mycoplasma pneumoniae Pneumonia in Chinese Children: A Systematic Review

Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia (MPP) becomes one of the most important health problems in China recently. Date for MPP in China is scarce. Although macrolides and/or cortical steroids had been reported to be effective treatment for MPP, the long-term outcome remained uncertain. A study on status of MPP in China was conducted via a systematic review of published studies which have the Chinese data and collected from published PubMed and core journals of China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database (CNKI). The analysis was based on epidemiology, clinical characteristics, treatment, drug resistance and prognosis. Twenty five articles concerned about MPP in Chinese children and adolescent were enrolled, including 11 studies on epidemiology/etiology, 11 studies on clinical characteristics, 7 studies on drug resistance, 5 studies on treatment from mainland China respectively. The overall incidence of MPP ranged from 7.1% to 54.4%. Fever and cough were most frequently identified in manifestations. Drug resistance to macrolides ranged from 18.9% to 90%. The outcome of treatment in patients who received combined treatment of macrolides, cephalosporin antibiotics and/or cortical steroid seems to be better than those who received macrolides only. Macrolide combined with cephalosporin or cortical steroid both may decrease the severity of MPP in the past decade. There was not enough evidence to suggest that cortical steroid can decrease the mortality of MPP in children. And a multi-center, randomized double blind research on the effect of cortical steroid was encouraged.