Mycoplasma pneumoniae Infection in Children Is a Risk Factor for Developing Allergic Diseases

Figure 1

Characterization of pneumonia patients. The flow chart shows the categorization of the 1330 patients in this study. The 650 pneumonia patients without MP infection (non-MPP patients) tested positive for either bacterial (𝑛 = 250) or viral (𝑛 = 400) infection, and 20% had elevated IgE levels (>100 IU/mL). Further categorization is shown for the presence of allergic conditions. Of the 680 pneumonia patients with MP infection (MPP patients), 61.76% had elevated IgE. The MPP patients could be further subdivided by the occurrence of allergic conditions (𝑛 = 278 without and 𝑛 = 402 with allergic conditions), including those with allergic conditions resulting in secondary asthma (𝑛 = 390 without and 𝑛 = 12 with secondary asthma) or they could be subdivided by the severity of the pneumonia (𝑛 = 573 with nonsevere pneumonia and 𝑛 = 107 with severe pneumonia), with the severe pneumonia categorized with high or low clinical pulmonary infection score (CPIS) (75 or 32 patients, resp.).