The prevalence of respiratory pathogens in adults with community-acquired pneumonia in an outpatient cohort

Chen, Jing; Li, Xiaoguang; Wang, Wei; Jia, Ying; Lin, Fei; Xu, Jie

Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a common illness that affects millions of people each year, and it is one of the most common infectious diseases that can lead to morbidity and mortality worldwide. The Global Burden of Disease Study reported that lower respiratory tract infection remains the second largest cause of death and years of life lost in 2013. 1 CAP is a disease that is diagnosed by clinical, epidemiological, radiographic and laboratory characteristics, and the clinician usually relies on empirical evidence when determining therapy, which can lead to antibiotic abuse. Therefore, the detection of respiratory pathogens is very important for the clinician to be able to treat CAP. Pathogens called bacteria, viruses, and fungi can cause pneumonia. In adults, bacterial pneumonia has been extensively studied, but viral pneumonia is not as well understood. With the help of new diagnostic technologies, viral respiratory tract infections are being identified as common etiologies of CAP. In adults, approximately 200 million cases of viral community-acquired pneumonia occur every year, and 15-56% of CAP cases are associated with RVIs. 2, 3 We designed this study to identify pathogens, including common pneumonia-causing bacteria, viruses and atypical pathogens, by multiplex real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR).