Diagnostic significance of the determination of streptococcus pneumoniae antigen in the urine of children with community acquired pneumonia

Community-acquired pneumonia remains an urgent problem in modern pediatrics. Taking into account the variety of pathogens of community-acquired pneumonia, an important task is to identify the etiology of this disease rapidly. Early diagnostics is able to increase the effectiveness of treatment and exclude the irrational prescription of antibacterial drugs or the formation of resistable microflora. Traditional methods of etiotropic diagnostics do not always meet such criteria as timeliness, minimal invasiveness, and simplicity of reproduction. Meeting these requirements is especially important in pediatric practice due to the difficulty of venous access, collection of spontaneous or induced sputum and negative childhood denial reaction to invasive manipulation. Recently, active efforts have been made to identify the early markers con-firming the etiology of pulmonary inflammation, while the criteria for timeliness and non-invasiveness are met by methods for determining pathogen antigens in accessible media such as saliva and urine.Considering the fact that Streptococcus pneumoniae remains one of the main causative agents of pneumonia, its testing is of great practical importance. This article presents an overview of modern methods of etiotropic diagnosis of community-acquired pneumonia and the results of our own study of the effectiveness of detecting pneumococcal antigens in urine using express tests. Attention is focused on the use of minimally invasive methods for identifying the pathogen in practical pulmonology. Evaluation of the effectiveness of rapid testing was carried out in comparison with the results of bacterial sputum culture for pneumococcus. The analysis of the obtained results showed the high sensitivity and specificity of the Alere Binax Now test when checking the etiology of community-acquired pneumonia in children.