By Staff Reports
(Hawaii)– From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
Vaccination that protects children against pneumonia also seems to give spillover protection to their grandparents. Researcher Marie Griffin of Vanderbilt University saw this in data from 1997 to 2009 in a national database of hospitalizations.
The vaccine was meant to prevent blood and ear infections from pneumococcus bacteria. But pneumonia also results from pneumococcus infection.
Griffin notes that older people, who have weaker immune systems, can be infected by children who carry the bacteria but are healthy:
“This vaccine not only decreased pneumonia in children, it also decreased pneumonia hospitalizations in older adults.”
The study in the New England Journal of Medicine was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Learn more at healthfinder.gov.
HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.