August 2013 pulmonary journal club: pneumococcal vaccine déjà vu

No abstract available. Article truncated at 150 words. Griffin MR, Zhu Y, Moore MR, Whitney CG, Grijalva CG. U.S. hospitalizations for pneumonia after a decade of pneumococcal vaccination. N Engl J Med. 2013;369(2):155-63. [CrossRef] [PubMed] The introduction of the 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7) into the U.S. childhood immunization schedule in 2000 has substantially reduced the incidence of vaccine-serotype invasive pneumococcal disease in young children and in unvaccinated older children and adults. By preventing the acquisition and carriage of pneumococcus in the nasopharynx of vaccinated children, PCV7 reduced the transmission of vaccine serotypes to the unvaccinated. The authors estimated the annual rates of hospitalization for pneumonia from any cause using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample database. Average annual rates of pneumonia-related hospitalizations from 1997 through 1999 (before the introduction of PCV7) and from 2007 through 2009 (well after its introduction) were used to estimate annual declines in hospitalizations due to pneumonia. The annual rate of hospitalization for pneumonia among