| abstract |
Nucleic acid probes are described for detecting the principle etiological agent of primary atypical pneumonia, Mycoplasma pneumoniae , or, optionally, Mycoplasma pneumoniae and Mycoplasma genitalium . Said probes are complementary to ribonucleic acid sequences found in these mycoplasmas and absent from other mycoplasma, other bacterial, animal, or plant genomes. As such, these probes can detect the rRNA, rDNA, or polymerase chain reaction amplification products from these mycoplasma species. This set of probes, plus the described amplification primers, circumscribe a method for detecting the etiological agents of atypical pneumonia, and for making a clinical diagnosis of this disease. This set of probes also circumscribes a method for identification of these infectious agents in culture media enrichments inoculated from clinical samples. |