Mycoplasma Pneumonia

Mycoplasma Pneumonia: General introduction

Mycoplasma pneumonia is primarily a very common cause of community-acquired pneumonia. Generally, this is one of those diseases that have a long and a slow onset. This type of pneumonia was first found in the cattle that were contrived with pleuropneumonia in the year 1898. In the year 1938 a medical exponent by the name of Reimann had perfectly explained the first few cases of the mycoplasma pneumonia that also occurred in humans. Reimann was also responsible for inventing the term “primary atypical pneumonia”. He thought of this particular name after a keen observation of a total seven patients in the US city of Philadelphia. Each of these aforementioned patients was found to be marked with severe constitutional symptoms not to mention symptoms in the upper as well as the lower tracts of the respiratory system. The patients also each had an expanded course that had a steady resolution. Peterson, another medical expert in the year 1943 discovered that the occurrence of the cold agglutinin as well as high titers of this cold agglutinins in several patients suffering from this particular type of pneumonia.

Later in the year 1944, scientific personality Eaton was given the credit of discovering a particular agent that was later named as Eaton’s agent. This agent was known to be the primary reason of this pneumonia. At first Eaton’s Agent was wrongly conceived to be a virus however it was later proved in the year 1961 as a Mycoplasma species. The organism M pneumonia is primarily responsible for causing this disease and this is mainly a pleomorphic organism and unlike a bacteria this organism doesn’t have a cell wall and at the same time, bearing sharp contrast to viruses it also does not require a particular host cell so as to replicate. The long as well as spastic type of cough is witnessed in this particular disease. This cough is mainly thought to happen because of the inhibition of the movement in the ciliary organs. The aforementioned organism posses an amazing motility to glide and also has several specialized tips end that are also filamentous. These tips actually allow the creature to burrow between the cilia that are located within the respiratory epithelium of humans. The microscopic creature gradually causes the bogging of these respiratory epithelial cells.

The aforementioned microscopic organism has dual properties that all seem to correlate nicely with all of its pathogenic properties that are found in humans. The first property is of a chosen resemblance for the human respiratory epithelial cells while the second property of this organism is its ability to create a certain amount of hydrogen peroxide. This produced hydrogen peroxide is thought to be primary responsible for the initial disturbance of the cell that lie in the respiratory tract and are also thought responsible for causing damage to the erythrocyte membranes. M pneumonia is presently recognized as one of the most known causes of the community-acquired pneumonia in patients who fall under the 40 year age group and the highest rate of the disease takes place in humans who fall in the 5- to 20-years age group.