Infection with Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria can cause serious illness and death. Invasive pneumococcal disease is responsible for about 200 deaths each year among children under 5 years old.
Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine can help prevent serious pneumococcal disease, such as meningitis and blood infections. It can also prevent some ear infections.
A new study shows the vaccine reduces the incidence of middle ear infection and pneumonia. "This highlights that the vaccine significantly decreases illnesses in children and reinforces its importance in our public health efforts," said Dr. Kathy Poehling, assistant professor of Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in Nashville.
The pneumococcal conjugate vaccine is well known to control bacterial meningitis and bacteremia -- a bacterial infection in the blood system -- but doctors needed good evidence that it helped control other illnesses.
Ear infections (otitis media) and pneumonia are common infections in children; there are more than seven million cases of ear infection and more than one half million cases of pneumonia each year.
Poehling and colleagues studied data from Tennessee's Medicaid records and from three commercial insurance companies in upstate New York. They found that after routine vaccination with the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine began children in Tennessee younger than 2 years old had 7 percent fewer cases of otitis media in Tennessee; 20 percent of these children New York got ear infections.