Latest reviews of “white lung” pneumonia, or “white lung syndrome,” among U.S. children have mother and father fearful their youngsters might contract yet one more pathogen this vacation season.
However “white lung” pneumonia isn’t a factor, consultants inform Fortune, and positively not a medical time period. It’s one option to describe the X-rays of some who’ve pneumonia, which has quite a lot of potential causes. And there’s no signal of an uncommon upward surge, with charges of pneumonia diagnoses in youngsters sitting round common, in line with nationwide well being knowledge obtainable to suppliers.
Pneumonia is an an infection of 1 or each lungs. It causes air sacs to refill with fluid or pus. And “by definition, [it] causes whiteness in the appearance of the lungs on a chest X-ray,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious illness specialist and senior scholar on the Johns Hopkins Middle for Well being Safety, tells Fortune.
It’s the most common cause of both pediatric and adult hospital admission within the U.S., with childbirth being the exception for adults. “Every year around the winter season in the United States, pneumonia characteristically rises,” Adalja provides. “There is no evidence that there is any increase prior to seasonal averages currently.”
Pneumonia instances in China unrelated, consultants say
Probably behind the trending however deceptive “white lung” phrase: a worry that cases of pneumonia of an “unknown origin” amongst China’s youngsters have unfold to European nations and the U.S. However such instances are being fueled by identified pathogens like RSV, flu, and mycoplasma pneumonia, consultants say. What’s extra, the kind of X-ray reportedly seen in reference to many Chinese language instances has a unique look: not white, however with “ground-glass opacities,” which might sign extra critical sickness.
“The first thing everybody feared was they had ‘seen this movie before,’” Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious ailments at Vanderbilt College in Nashville, Tenn., tells Fortune relating to the World Well being Group’s Nov. 23 announcement concerning the mysterious instances of pneumonia.
However Chinese language authorities supplied additional info to the WHO and cleared up the matter, Schaffner says, including that the world may even see another winter of increased infections after the lifting of COVID precautions. And there’s actually extra consideration paid to infectious illness nowadays, provides Dr. Steve Morse, professor of epidemiology at Columbia College.
“Everyone’s a little bit on edge because of the pandemic we’ve just had,” Morse tells Fortune. “I think there’s a lesson there, that we may be a little more aware of these things—including things that may not actually be unusual—after the pandemic.”
The priority this season is just for the standard sicknesses, consultants say—flu, RSV, COVID, and influenza-like sicknesses. None are new, and all can result in pneumonia, as they’ve at all times been able to doing.
And whereas the title “mycoplasma pneumonia” is perhaps new to most, it’s removed from a brand new pathogen. Attributable to micro organism, it’s a “common cause of respiratory infection worldwide, with cases appearing year-round in different regions and local outbreaks occurring every few years,” Rajiv Chowdhury, professor of worldwide well being on the Robert Stempel Faculty of Public Well being and Social Work at Florida Worldwide College in Miami, tells Fortune.
What’s extra, present world ranges of mycoplasma pneumonia look like hovering under pre-pandemic ranges, Chowdhury says, citing analysis not too long ago printed in Lancet Microbe.
