Summary

Original source:
http://my.webmd.com/content/article/106/108091.htm

Details

• There is "strong evidence" of an association between asthma and complications from a common bacterium known to cause pneumonia, researchers report in The New England Journal of Medicine.
• Pneumococcal disease is an infection caused by the bacterium Streptococcus pneumoniae, also known as pneumococcus.
• The most common types of infection caused by this bacterium are ear infection, lung infection (pneumonia), blood stream infection (bacteremia), sinus infection, and meningitis.
• Researchers say that people with high-risk asthma are three times as likely to get complications from this infection as those without asthma.
• People with low-risk asthma have double the risk of those without asthma, says the study.
• Asthma is on the rise in the U.S. and many other developed countries, for reasons health experts don't totally understand.
• Between 100 and 150 million people worldwide have asthma, says the World Health Organization (WHO).
• The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America estimates that 20 million Americans (one in 15 people) have asthma, with rates rising across all age, sex, and racial groups.
• All participants were 2-49 years old and had been participants in Tennessee's Medicaid program for more than a year.
• That translates to 4.2 episodes of infection per 10,000 people with high-risk asthma, 2.3 episodes per 10,000 people with low-risk asthma, and 1.2 episodes of infection per 10,000 people without asthma.
• The study defined "high-risk asthma" as asthma that required admission to a hospital or emergency department, long-term use of oral steroids used for asthma control, or the dispensing of three or more prescriptions for inhaled drugs called beta-agonists within the year before enrollment in the study.
• As asthma rises in the U.S., "discussions about the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of pneumococcal vaccination among persons with asthma will need to be carefully explored," write Talbot and colleagues.

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