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. 2025 Mar 25;17(1):6.
doi: 10.1186/s41479-025-00159-x.

High incidence of pneumonia cases observed in children seen in general practice consultations during the 2023-2024 season, France

Caroline Guerrisi  1 , Olivier Steichen  2   3 , Titouan Launay  2 , Isabelle Bardoulat  4 , Delphine Viriot  5 , Mathilde François  6   7 , Aubane Renard  2 , Josselin Le Bel  8   9 , Louise Rossignol  2   8 , Romain Palich  10 , François Goehringer  11 , Alexandre Bleibtreu  12 , Isabelle Parent du Châtelet  5 , Thomas Hanslik  2   13 , Thierry Blanchon  14
Affiliations

High incidence of pneumonia cases observed in children seen in general practice consultations during the 2023-2024 season, France

Caroline Guerrisi et al. Pneumonia (Nathan). .

Abstract

Background: An increase in hospitalizations for respiratory illnesses due to Mycoplasma pneumoniae was reported in France in late October 2023. Data in primary care are scarce and microbiological or radiological investigations are not routinely recommended for community-acquired pneumonia.

Methods: We computed weekly incidence rates of pneumonia and bronchiolitis cases from the electronic records of French general practitioners from January 2016 to August 2024. These weekly incidences were described in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic, overall and by age group. For better interpretation, the weekly incidences of pneumonia and bronchiolitis were compared with virological surveillance data of acute respiratory infections observed in general practice.

Results: During the 2016-2024 period, 108,539 cases of pneumonia and 46,411 cases of bronchiolitis were identified from 51,351,414 consultations. The incidence of pneumonia consultations in general practice during the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 seasons is similar to that observed before the Covid-19 pandemic, after two seasons of low incidence (2020-2021 and 2021-2022). However, the 2023-2024 pneumonia epidemic is the strongest ever observed in children (0-14 years, and especially among the 5-14 years) in general practice since 2016, with an earlier onset. Regarding the incidence of bronchiolitis in children, the 2023-2024 season was in line with the 2021-2022, 2022-2023 and pre-pandemic seasons. No abnormal circulation of classical seasonal viruses was observed during the 2023-2024 season.

Conclusions: The sharp increase in pneumonia cases observed this season among children in primary care settings requires the implementation of studies to understand the cause and to confirm or refute the possible association with M. pneumoniae as observed in hospitals. Given the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the circulation of pathogens, it would be useful to extend, even on a temporary basis, the traditional microbiological surveillance in primary care to include common bacterial pathogens affecting the upper and lower respiratory tract, such as M. pneumoniae, S. pneumoniae or Streptococcus A.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval and consent to participate: The IQVIA electronic medical records (EMR) database represents aggregated data that are extracted anonymously from GPs EMR (for sex, age and ICD-10 codes only). This study was then performed on anonymous data without any way to identify patients. For this kind of studies, under French law, consent of the patients is not needed. Regarding the virological data, the protocol was conducted in agreement with the Helsinki declaration. We obtained authorization from the French Data Protection Agency (CNIL#471393) and the French ethical research committee (Comité de protection des personnes). Consent for publication: Not applicable. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
a Weekly incidence rates of pneumonia consultations in general practice (per 100,000 population), overall and by age group (0–14; 15–64; 65 +); b Weekly incidence rates of pneumonia consultations in general practice for the 2023–2024 season (in red) compared with historical data since 2015–2016 (in blue) by age group (< 5; 5–14; 0–14; 15–44; 45–64; 65 +); c Weekly incidence rates of bronchiolitis consultations in general practice (per 100,000 population), overall and in the 0–14 age group; d Weekly incidence rates of bronchiolitis consultations in general practice for the 2023–2024 season (in red) compared to historical data since 2015–2016 (in blue) by age groups (< 2; 2–4; 5–14; 0–14), IQVIA’s EMR database from week 1 of 2016 to week 34 of 2024 in France
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Number of swabs (bars) and positivity rates (curves) of respiratory viruses tested in patients aged 0–14 years presenting with an acute respiratory infection and swabbed by Sentinelles physicians (GPs and pediatricians) from week 39 of 2023 to week 15 of 2024 in France
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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