Pneumonia Vaccine Shown to Actually Increase Bacterial Infections It Is Supposed to Prevent

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Pneumonia Vaccine Shown to Actually Increase Bacterial Infections It Is Supposed to Prevent

Posted By Dr. Mercola | May 01 2012

It may come as no surprise to parents of infants and toddlers that statistics show that children between the ages of 6 and 35 months have an average of six episodes of acute rhinosinusitis a year. But how many parents realize that one reason their kids are getting so many ear and sinus infections is because the pneumococcal vaccine that's supposed to prevent these illnesses is CAUSING them?

The health community has known for years that non-vaccine S. pneumoniae serotypes had not only quickly replaced the seven included in the original vaccine, Prevnar, but were also causing invasive non-vaccine-type pneumonia to increase by 71 percent. That's the reason officials recently introduced the new 13-valent pneumonia vaccine—to hopefully keep the replacement serotypes at bay.

A secondary problem is that the overuse of antibiotics for ear and sinus infections has also caused these serotypes to become resistant to antibiotics. This problem was most recently discussed in a study published by the Infectious Diseases Society of America. What the Society didn't discuss, however, was that scientists have known for years that the S. pneumoniae responsible for pneumonia not only was changing one of its DNA letters EVERY 15 WEEKS, making it more resistant to antibiotics, but HAD ALREADY DONE SO before Prevnar even hit the market.