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This is not the information that you will get if you read standard health literature coming from health authorities like the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and similar authorities around the world. They all repeat the standard line that pneumonia vaccine is available to protect against the disease and that it is safe.
They also tend to give the same recommendation - that all people over 65 years old, as well as people who suffer from diseases that weaken the immune system, should receive pneumonia vaccination.
If you look at the results of some major scientific studies, however, you will find evidence that the pneumonia vaccine provides very little protection.
And this limited protection is only against the specific type of pneumonia that the vaccine is developed for. This is usually the pneumococcal vaccine, which is intended to protect against the most common forms of pneumonia caused by bacteria.
However, there are many other causes of pneumonia, including virus, other types of bacteria, fungi, protozoa as well as "unknown causes". Pneumonia vaccination does not protect against these other forms of the disease.
So what do the sceintific studies say?
Pneumococcal Vaccine does not appear to protect against pneumonia
The above headline comes from one of the most recent reports, published on 7 January 2009 in ScienceDaily. This is based on a large scale study lead by Dr. Matthias Egger from the University of Bern, Switzerland and published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (7 January 2009).
The study looked at polysaccharide pneumococcal vaccines (PPVs), which are commonly recommended in industralised countries as a pneumonia vaccine for elderly people aged above 65. Previously, studies had shown conflicting results regarding the efficacy of PPV and this was an issue that the researchers sought to address.
In this study, researchers looked at 22 clinical trials, reviews and meta-analyses, which involved more than 100,000 participants from countries in North America, India, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Their findings:
Dr. Matthias Egger concluded: "Policy makers may therefore wish to reconsider their current recommendations for PPV, especially where routine pneumococcal conjugate immunization has been introduced." Not surprisingly, however, other medical commentators warn that there should be no change in pneumonia vaccine policy.
What sort of protection?
What, exactly, does the pneumonia vaccine, or polysaccharide pneumococcal vaccine (PPV) protect against? Again, if you ask the regular medical authorities, they will tell you that PPVs protect against 23 types of bacteria that can cause pneumonia. Wow! Sounds like a great deal, 23-in-1.
In reality, there are more than 80 types of bacteria known to cause pneumonia, as well as viruses, fungi, protozoa and unknown causes. But never mind. These 23 bacteria account for the majority of pneumonia cases. So you are assured that you are generally well-protected.
But there is an important minor detail that is usually left out. Since pneumonia vaccination targets bacteria, it is only effective when the bacteria enters the bloodstream. This seldom happens as most of the time, the bacteria linked to pneumonia remain in the lungs.
Fewer than 0.1 percent of elderly people develop the condition called pneumococcal bacteremia, where the pneumonia bacteria enters the bloodstream. And for this tiny group of people, PPV has been found to reduce the risk of contracting this disease by about 50 percent.
This was the finding of a major study by researchers at Seattle, Washington, USA and published in the New England Journal of Medicine (May 1, 2003;348:1747-1755).
In this retrospective study, at that time the largest study ever done on PPV, the researchers examined medical data on 47,365 people aged 65 years and older, from 1998 through 2001. In this group:
The reserchers found that people who received the pneumonia vaccine had:
The researchers concluded: "These findings support the effectiveness of the pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine for the prevention of bacteremia, but they suggest that alternative strategies are needed to prevent nonbacteremic pneumonia, which is a more common manifestation of pneumococcal infection in elderly persons."
How long does the 'protection' last?
Even assuming that pneumonia vaccination is effective - which is probably not the case - the next question we need to ask his how long does the protection last.
PPV was introduced in the 1980s and at that time, it was thought that one shot of the pneumonia vaccine would protect a patient for life. Later studies found that this was not the case. So the protection period was revised to 10 years. But just to be sure, experts recommended that high-risk patients get booster shots every five years.
Now, it seems even that may not be enough! The Journal American Geriatrics Society (Feb 2003;51(2):240-5) reported that in a study of 67 elderly individuals, even the booster shot was found to be inadequate.
Researchers measured antibody levels after the participants had received an initial dose of the pneumococcal vaccine and then gave each individual a booster shot. Antibody levels were measured one month, six months and one year later. Levels of the patients’ protective antibodies rose significantly one month after the booster shot. But by the end of the year, levels had dropped to equal or below the starting points - indicating that the vaccine no longer protected the participants after one year.
So now the researchers are suggesting that elderly persons be given pneumonia vaccination every year or every other year. But the safety of administering PPV so frequently is not known.
Click here to learn more about pneumonia vaccine side effects.