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Mycoplasma pneumoniae is a bacterium that lacks a cell wall. It produces infections all It produces infections world-wide, in epidemic outbreaks every 4-7 years, or endemically. Its clinical manifestations occur mostly in the respiratory tract and it is a common cause of atypical pneumonia. The treatment is with macrolides, tetracyclines or fluoroquinolones. Since 2000, an increase in resistance to macrolides has been detected worldwide, being more frequent in Asia. In Europe the frequency of resistance ranges between 1% and 25%, depending on the country. Molecular techniques and serology techniques provides very high sensitivity in diagnostic confirmation, being very useful for detecting and controlling M. pneumoniae outbreaks. The detection of resistance to macrolides requires a sequencing technique.

To describe the characteristics of patients diagnosed with Mycoplasma pneumoniae infection.A retrospective study of clinical and epidemiological characteristics of acute infections by M. pneumoniae confirmed by PCR was carried out in the Navarra Health Service (Spain) in 2014-2018.M. pneumoniae infection was confirmed in 9.5% of analyzed patients. Among 123 confirmed cases, 65% were 5-14 years old, 21.1%lt;5 years old, and 13.8% were ≥14 years old. Pneumonia was radiologically confirmed in 83.7% of cases, and 22.0% presented extra-respiratory manifestations. A total of 44.7% of cases required hospitalization. Bilateral pneumonia, asthmatic crisis and extra-respiratory manifestations were associated to higher risk of hospitalization (81.3, 72.2 and 66.7%, respectively). Microbiological targeted treatment was monotherapy with macrolides in 60.2% of cases and combined with other antibiotics in 13.0%.M. pneumoniae was the cause of acute respiratory infection affecting mainly to children younger than 14 years old and frequently required hospitalization.