| Summary: | <i>Mycoplasma</i><i>pneumoniae</i> is one of the major causative pathogens of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). <i>M. pneumoniae</i> CAP is clinically and radiologically distinct from bacterial CAPs. One feature of the Japanese Respiratory Society (JRS) guidelines is a trial to be carried out to differentiate between <i>M. pneumoniae</i> pneumonia and bacterial pneumonia for the selection of antibiotics. The purpose of the present study was to clarify the clinical and radiological differences of the <i>M. pneumoniae</i> CAP and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) CAP. This study was conducted at 5 institutions and assessed a total of 210 patients with <i>M. pneumoniae</i> CAP and 956 patients with COVID-19 CAP. The median age was significantly younger in patients with <i>M. pneumoniae</i> CAP than COVID-19 CAP. Among the clinical symptoms, cough and sputum were observed more frequently in patients with <i>M. pneumoniae</i> CAP than those with COVID-19 CAP. However, the diagnostic specificity of these findings was low. In contrast, loss of taste and anosmia were observed in patients with COVID-19 CAP but not observed in those with <i>M. pneumoniae</i> CAP. Bronchial wall thickening and nodules (tree-in-bud and centrilobular), which are chest computed tomography (CT) features of <i>M. pneumoniae</i> CAP, were rarely observed in patients with COVID-19 CAP. Our results demonstrated that there were two specific differences between <i>M. pneumoniae</i> CAP and COVID-19 CAP: (1) the presence of loss of taste and/or anosmia and (2) chest CT findings.
|
|---|