Health Highlights | Walking Pneumonia
Key takeaways:
- Pneumonia cases overall are drastically higher this year over last year
- Walking pneumonia cases are being seen more in young kids
- Severe illness in young kids with pneumonia is greater this year
Normally, school-aged kids, teenagers and young adults are more likely to have what's called “walking pneumonia.”
It's caused by Mycoplasma Pneumoniae, a bacterium that causes respiratory tract infections.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports test positivity for walking pneumonia increased in the late spring of 2024 and remained high.
The term walking pneumonia wa coined because it's possible for someone to be walking around with the infection and not even know it.
Keith Hanson, MD, the General Pediatrics Unit Medical Director at OSF Children's Hospital of Illinois, says every year some strains of illness, or a particular virus, are more common than others.
Right now, it's pneumonia.
“What's a little unusual about this year, is we're seeing that same bacteria causing pneumonia in kids that are younger than usual, and the severity of the illness is more,” Dr. Hanson says. “We're seeing more kids admitted to the hospital with pneumonia, and they're definitely younger than that typical age range like preschoolers and even some infants.”
Dr. Hanson says as is the case with bacterial infections, there are antibiotics to treat walking pneumonia.
The hope is to shorten the illness and make it less severe, while decreasing the chance of spreading the infection to others.