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Sheena Johnson, Possible Autoantibody Complications in Mycoplasma pneumoniae Infection, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 43, Issue 10, 15 November 2006, Page 1246, https://doi.org/10.1086/508471
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The article by Klement et al. [1] reports on an interesting study of an outbreak of Mycoplasma pneumoniae infection in a closed community. Most people in this study experienced what would be normally regarded as a nasty cold; in only a few did illness progress to clinical pneumonia. There is no doubt about the infectivity of M. pneumoniae, but in this study, there was some uncertainty as to whether the patients had previously been exposed to it, because every patient, to some degree, seemed to express antibodies against it. However, evidence of seroconversion might indicate that the patient had not been previously exposed to the mycoplasma; in particular, the patients who had pneumonia and who clearly showed the most severe symptoms all had evidence of seroconversion. It was interesting to note that some of the subjects who did not exhibit symptoms also experienced seroconversion, revealing that some people had a silent infection and were naturally resistant to the organism. Possible cellular immunity and cold agglutinins were not measured.
