Detección de Mycoplasma pneumoniae mediante PCR-hibridación in vitro en ni？os con infección respiratoria

background: acute respiratory infection is considered one of the main causes of morbidity worldwide; it can be associated to serious complications. a great number of viral and bacterial agents have been implicated in the development of the disease. recently, importance has been given to mycoplasma pneumoniae as a respiratory pathogen, since epidemiologic studies suggest a raise in the incidence of diseases due to this microorganism. nevertheless, nowadays clinical laboratories deal with a variety of difficulties in the diagnosis of this agent, raising the need for other molecular methods for its detection. objective: the detection of m. pneumoniae in children with respiratory infection by a pcr-in vitro hybridization technique. methods: 36 oropharyngeal swabs from children between 0 and 9 years of age with respiratory infection were analyzed by pcr-in vitro hybridization; 36% had pneumonia and 30% bronchopneumonia. results: the implementation of the pcr-in vitro hybridization for the detection of m. pneumoniae in patients with respiratory infection allowed the detection of the pathogen's dna in 67% of the patients studied. of these, 33% had pneumonia. conclusion: pcr-in vitro hybridization is useful for the detection of m. pneumoniae. our results show the frequent presence of nucleic acids of m. pneumoniae in the samples studied and suggest this microorganism can be a frequent causal agent of respiratory infection