Occasionally, the Mycoplasma pneumonia may be associated with a painful ear infection, anemia or skin rashes. The disease is usually relatively mild, but occasionally individual symptoms may be quite distressing with the patients feeling generally much worse than they look. The outlook for most treated patients is excellent as the infection responds well to Erythromycin and Tetracyclines. An untreated Mycoplasma pneumonia, in most cases will resolve spontaneously, but may easily drag on over a couple of months or more. Immunity after mycoplasma infections does occur but it is not life long and its exact duration is unknown.
Recurrent infections are usually much milder than the original episode.
Currently there are no vaccines for the prevention of Mycoplasma infection and the only way of averting the associated walking pneumonia is to avoid being exposed to the sneezing or coughing of infected patients.