Significance of lipopolysaccharide detection in children with pulmonary infections

W.-J. Dai, Z.-W. Dong, X.-C. Yang, Y.-F. Yuan

Department of Pediatrics, Huai’an Maternal and Child Health Hospital Affiliated to Yangzhou University, Huai’an, Jiangsu, P.R. China. dzew09@163.com

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• Respiratory Medicine

OBJECTIVE: The present study aimed to observe the alterations of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and some other laboratory indexes in children suffering from pulmonary infections, and to investigate the condition of Gram-negative bacterial infection.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: All the patients received routine blood test, C reactive protein (CRP), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), Mycoplasma pneumoniae antibody IgM (MP-IgM), LPS, blood culture and chest X-ray examination. The clinical data was collected followed by induction arrangement and statistical analysis.

RESULTS: In terms of the rate of abnormity in peripheral white blood cell count and positive rate of blood CRP, no significant difference was found between children with pulmonary infections and the healthy individual in the control group (p > 0.05). The positive rates of blood MP-IgM were 33.33% and 32.26% in children with different progressive stages of pulmonary infections, which were significantly lower than those in the control group (62.96%) (p < 0.05). The positive rates of blood LPS in the observation group were higher than those in the control group, especially for those children at progressive stages within one week; and the difference between them was significant (p < 0.05). With regard to blood bacterial culture, the positive rates were 9.52% and 29.03% for children in progressive stages within one week and over one week in the observation group, respectively; the latter was significantly higher than that in the control group (p < 0.05). The result of the correlation analysis suggested a weak correlation between the positive rate of increased blood LPS in the observation group and that in blood bacterial culture (χ2 = 6.61, p < 0.05; Pearson’s contingency coefficient C = 0.34). However, there was no significant correlation between the positive rate of increased blood LPS and peripheral blood white cell count, CRP, or MP-IgM (p > 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: Endotoxemia is often accompanied by pulmonary infections, and gram-negative bacterium is a common pathogenic bacterium in children with different progressive stages of pneumonia.

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