Is fungi replacing bacteria as etiological agents of community acquired pneumonia-current strategy of changing scenario?

---

Original Article

Author Details : Sowmya A. Venkateswaran, Jayalakshmi Gopal, Agatha David

Volume : 3, Issue : 4, Year : 2016

Article Page : 450-453

Suggest article by email

Get Permission

---

Abstract

Introduction: Pneumonia is one of the major infectious public health problem in developing countries .The etiologic agents causing Community Acquired Pneumonia (CAP) has been changed in the recent years. This study is conducted to determine the fungal etiologic agents causing CAP and the associated risk factors.
Materials & Methods: About 150 patients were presented with signs and symptoms of pneumonia during the one year study period. Various respiratory samples were processed and the fungal etiologic agents were identified according to standard operating procedures.
Results: Out of 150 patients, 75 were immunocompetant (IP) and rest 75 patients were immunocompromised (IC). Most commonly associated risk factor was Diabetes mellitus (48%) and haematological malignancies (18.66%). Monofungal pathogen was isolated in 6.25% of cases of IP group and in 26.78% of cases in IC group. Fungal pathogen as a part of polymicrobial infection was seen only in IC group (2 cases). Aspergillus fumigatus is the most common isolate in the IC patients (52.94%) followed by Aspergillus flavus (23.52%). P.jerovicii is isolated in 5.88% of cases in immunocompromised patients. Hematologic malignancies are more commonly associated with fungal infection (28.57%) followed by Diabetes mellitus (16.66%).
Conclusion: Invasive fungal lung infections are increasingly encountered in critical care and pulmonolgy practice. With increasing number of immunosupressed host and emergence of drug resistant fungal pathogens, a high degree of clinical suspicion and better laboratory diagnostic methods are mandatory for prompt and effective treatment of invasive fungal infections in these high risk populations.

Keywords: Fungal pathogens, Community Acquired Pneumonia, Risk factors

How to cite : Venkateswaran S A, Gopal J, David A, Is fungi replacing bacteria as etiological agents of community acquired pneumonia-current strategy of changing scenario?. Indian J Microbiol Res 2016;3(4):450-453

This is an Open Access (OA) journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.