“Can the infection causing a pneumonia show in a blood test?”
My son is 4 years old and has been detected with pneumonia. The doctors are still trying to find the right bacteria causing the pneumonia infection to start off with the antibiotics. Will the bacteria or virus show up in a blood test?
5 Answers
A blood culture test can identify the germ causing pneumonia. Thank you.
Yes, it's possible to detect bacteria causing pneumonia in a blood culture, especially in small children.
Blood testing is not usually used to detect the type of organism causing pneumonia. If the infection disseminates into the blood, causing generalized infection (septicemia), then organisms may be detected in blood culture testing.
Antibodies to certain types of infectious organisms can be detected in the blood and that can help determine the causative organism. If the infection has spread to the blood stream (sepsis) then a blood culture can identify the organism. There are some new genetic tests that can screen for the DNA of certain infectious agents.
Jeff Sims
Pathologist
It can show up in your son's blood, but hopefully not. This is so because if it is in his blood stream, then it has moved from confined to his lung to being spread throughout the body, or sepsis. This is true for bacterial pneumonia, but viral pneumonia generally is confined to the lung.
