Cases of walking pneumonia are surging in U.S. kids this year, CDC reports

Children who have coughs that go on for weeks may have a type of walking pneumonia that’s been surging in the U.S. this year, and they may need a different antibiotic regimen to treat it, infectious disease experts say.

Children who have coughs that go on for weeks may have a type of walking pneumonia that’s been surging in the U.S. this year, and they may need a different antibiotic regimen to treat it, infectious disease experts say.

“It’s very much been on our radar since early summer, when we started to see a remarkable increase in the number of kids with pneumonia who seemed to have this particular type of pneumonia,” said Dr. Buddy Creech, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Creech says that on the same day in August, four Nashville-area pediatricians reached out to him to ask why so many kids were coughing in the summertime. These doctors wanted advice, he says, because their go-to antibiotic for pneumonia – amoxicillin – didn’t seem to be working in these cases.

The pneumonia is caused by tiny Mycoplasma pneumoniae bacteria and cases are spiking this year, particularly among preschool-age children, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which sent a bulletin alerting parents and doctors to the uptick last week.

Mycoplasma pneumonia is the latest entry on a growing list of lung infections keeping doctors on their toes this fall. Whooping cough, or pertussis, cases – which also cause a prolonged cough – are five times higher than they were at this time last year, and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, is also rising in parts of the US.

In the past, it’s been difficult to test for Mycoplasma. It’s not a germ that likes to grow in a Petri dish, which is the standard, if slow, way to test for bacterial infections.

Now, Creech says, better diagnostic tests are making it easier to detect these bacteria more quickly and reliably. With so many germs making kids cough this fall, it’s crucial that doctors use these new tests to get the right diagnosis, he said.