Assessment of serum sialic acid correlated with C3 in children with Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia

BACKGROUND: Different from the diagnosis of bacterial infections, Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia (MPP) is still lacking of convenient non‐specific laboratory parameters. METHOD: A total of 125 children with MPP were included in the MPP group and 89 children with Mycoplasma‐negative pneumonia were included in the control group, and the sera were collected from the children at both the acute and recovery stages in the two groups. RESULTS: The sialic acid and C3 in the MPP group were significantly higher than those in the control group both at the acute and at the recovery stage. On the other hand, the sialic acid and C3 at the acute stage were significantly higher than those at the recovery stage in the MPP group. However, in the control group, the sialic acid and C3 demonstrated IgG exhibited no significant change between the acute stage and the recovery stage. Lastly, positive correlations between sialic acid level and C3 level were identified in the MPP group at both acute and recovery stages. CONCLUSION: Our study demonstrated that the serum sialic acid correlated with C3 specifically increased in children with MPP, indicating that it might be the important non‐specific parameters in the diagnosis of MPP.