Schizophrenia Case Studies

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Background
John, a ten-year-old, normally active child has been feeling ill for about a week. John came down with a dry cough and fever around a week ago, which his parents dismissed as just a simple cold. After taking over the counter medication he was feeling relief the following day. A few days pass, and he began to feel ill once again at school. He was feeling lethargic, had a sore throat, and wasn’t active during recess as usual. His teacher noticed these symptoms and decided to call his parents. His parents picked him up and took him to a nearby urgent care to get checked out. His symptoms were not significant enough to warrant a lab test and the attending physician ruled it as a mild case of the flu. The attending told Johns parents, …show more content…

The blood test confirmed that there was indeed an infection going on with the elevated WBC count. The Gram stain remained inconclusive as there was no firm evidence that there was a pathogen present in the sputum. The x-ray was a big piece of evidence to figuring it all out. The patchy areas narrowed things down with pneumonia and tuberculosis. The ELISA test was what allowed the doctor to make his diagnosis. The ELISA test revealed there were antibodies present for the bacterium Mycoplasma pneumoniae (Bono, 2018). The doctor knew this meant John had walking pneumonia, also known as atypical …show more content…

Mycoplasmas can be distinguished from bacteria by looking for the lack of a cell wall structure (Kashyap, 2010). This prevents them from being accurately stained by Gram staining. This will result in Mycoplasma being dyed pink, showing a negative result. But, phylogenetically, Mycoplasmas are more closely related to gram-positive bacteria.
M. pneumoniae make up more than 40% of community-acquired pneumonia cases and result in as many as 18% of cases requiring hospitalization in children. M. pneumoniae infections are greatest among school-aged children 5-15 years old. The rate of infection declines after adolescence and on into adulthood (Kashyap, 2010). Atypical pneumonia is spread through respiratory droplets, such as sneezing or coughing. Atypical pneumonia is predominantly seen in school children because they are always in such close contact with each other.

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