Doctors Suggest Celiac Disease Patients Get Pneumonia Vaccine

Patients suffering from celiac disease have higher odds of developing pneumonia if they haven’t received the pneumococcal vaccine.

To examine the risk of community-acquired pneumonia among patients with celiac disease, researchers assessed whether vaccinations against streptococcal pneumonia minimized this risk.

Study authors from the University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK, and the University of Salerno, Salerno, Italy, identified all patients with celiac disease in the Clinical Practice Research Datalink associated with English Hospital Episodes Statistics from April 1997 and March 2011.

The research team calculated absolute rates of community-acquired pneumonia for patients with celiac disease compared to controls.

Among the 9,803 patients with celiac disease and 101,755 people in the control group, there were 179 and 2,864 community-acquired pneumonia events, respectively.

The team noted that although the overall absolute rate of pneumonia was similar in patients with celiac disease and controls (3.42 and 3.12 per 1,000 person-years, respectively). They discovered a 28% increased risk of pneumonia in celiac disease patients who were unvaccinated compared to the vaccinated controls.

The results showed that the increased risk was limited to those younger than 65, was highest near the time of diagnosis, and was maintained for more than five years after diagnosis. Only 26.6% got vaccinated after their celiac disease diagnosis.

According to the study, unvaccinated celiac disease patients below 65 year s old have a higher risk of communality-acquired pneumonia that wasn’t noticed in their vaccinated counterparts.

The study authors commented, “As only a minority of patients with celiac disease are being vaccinated there is a missed opportunity to intervene to protect these patients from pneumonia.”