People with asthma face twice the risk of developing deadly pneumococcal disease and health officials should consider recommending vaccination to reduce the danger, according to a study released Wednesday.
Current federal guidelines say people with asthma, which affects 7 percent of the U.S. population, do not need to get a pneumococcal vaccine that prevents infections that can cause pneumonia, brain damage or a frequently deadly blood infection.
But a team led by Thomas Talbot of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tenn., tracked 635 Medicaid recipients with pneumococcal disease and found that the rate of asthma in that group was twice as high as in a control group that did not have the infection.
The more severe the asthma, the greater the risk. The danger was present among young children, adolescents and adults.
“We’re the first study to show that people with asthma have a risk of pneumococcal disease. Now we have to have a discussion on the costs and benefits of having people vaccinated,” Talbot, an infectious disease specialist, told Reuters.
The vaccine already is recommended for people with lung diseases, heart disease, diabetes, alcoholism and liver problems.
Talbot and his colleagues estimated that routine vaccination would prevent up to three serious pneumococcal disease cases each year for every 10,000 people.
“More formal cost-benefit analyses are needed to change current recommendations for vaccination,” they said.
“As the incidence of asthma continues to climb in the United States, the burden of invasive pneumococcal disease due to asthma is likely to increase,” they said.