Detection of Mycoplasma Pneumoniae in Smokers with Respiratory Disease and the Association between History of Smoking and Mycoplasma Pneumoniae Infection

Background and Objectives: Mycoplasma pneumoniae is one of the most important causes of community-acquired pneumonia, especially in dense communities. The present study aimed to detect M. pneumoniae among smokers with respiratory disease, and examine the relationship between smoking history and the prevalence of M. pneumoniae infection. Materials and Methods: In this study, a total of 44 nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from smokers with respiratory disease. All samples were cultured in PPLO Broth liquid media. Following the cultivation and extraction of the genome using phenol chloroform method and Roche kit, the PCR test with gene-specific primer was performed. We used the standard strain of M. pneumonia, ATCC:29342. Results: of the 44 saliva specimens collected from smokers with respiratory diseases using specific-gem primers, 5 samples (11.36%) were positive for M. pneumoniae. Conclusion: The findings of this study suggest that PCR is one of the fastest and most sensitive methods for detecting respiratory diseases, such as M. pneumoniae. This study also showed smoking as one of the risk factors associated with M. pneumoniae.