الفهرس 
PNEUMONIA IN CHILDRENOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Abstract
Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is one of the primary causes of morbidity and mortality in children. Autophagy-related protein 7 (Atg7) is a key autophagy effector enzyme that also regulates immunity and cell death in combination with other Atg proteins. The involvement of Atg7 in phagocytosis indicates that Atg7 deficiency could increase vulnerability to infection. The study aimed to measure the serum level of Atg7 in patients with complicated and non-complicated pneumonia and to correlate the level of serum Atg7 with the severity of pneumonia and the development of complications.
Our study is a case control study, in which we recruited 105 children and they were divided into three groups: group A (complicated pneumonia), group B (un-complicated pneumonia) and group C (healthy control).
There was no statistically significant difference between the three study groups regarding age, sex, birth weight, residency, maternal education, feeding and exposure to passive smoking.
Regarding symptoms and signs, there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups of study (group A and B) regarding fever, cough, malaise, diarrhea and signs of respiratory distress. But there is significant difference in anorexia (100% among group A and 88.6% among group B), abdominal pain (22.9 % among group A), chest pain (17.1% among group A) and vomiting (37.1% among group A and 2.9% among group B).
Regarding examination, there was a significant difference between groups A and B regarding Pediatric Respiratory Severity Score (PRESS score), group A had higher PRESS score. According to the signs of respiratory distress (RD) there was a significant high incidence of grunting (RD grade 3) among group A 77.10% compared to group B 37.10% ,however, there was negative correlation between PRESS score and the grade of respiratory distress among patients of pneumonia and serum Atg7.