Prevalence and Phenotyping of Chlamydia Pneumoniae Infections Among Pnuemonias Tested With Simplex and Multiplex PCR

This international retrospective Franco-Swiss study focuses on community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) caused by Chlamydia pneumoniae. The working hypothesis is that the prevalence of C. pneumoniae pneumonia is overestimated by the medical community. The primary objective is to determine the true prevalence of C. pneumoniae infections among patients with pneumonia who underwent simplex or multiplex PCR testing. Secondary objectives include;1)Outpatient management2)Hospitalization in a medical ward3)Admission to the intensive care unit4) In-hospital mortality5) Radiological presentation of patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) caused by Chlamydia pneumoniae 6)Prevalence of viral or bacterial co-infections associated with C. pneumoniae CAP

Detailed Description We have all learned and continue to teach that community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is essentially represented by three bacteria: Legionella pneumophila, Mycoplasma pneumoniae, and Chlamydia pneumoniae. While the recent Mycoplasma outbreak in France and the prevalence of severe Legionella infections in intensive care units confirm the real impact of these pathogens in CAP, the low number of Chlamydia pneumoniae cases documented by PCR raises questions.Over the past twenty years, the development of highly sensitive molecular tests (specific PCR or multiplex PCR targeting intracellular respiratory pathogens) has made it possible to precisely detect Chlamydia pneumoniae and to confirm or rule out its presence in the respiratory tract of patients with pneumonia.We are therefore conducting a retrospective study between France and Switzerland to determine, on the one hand, the number of CAP cases due to Chlamydia pneumoniae confirmed by PCR, and on the other hand, to better characterize the phenotype of these patients.