Developments in Brief : Pneumonia Vaccine Falls Short in Test

A test vaccine for a common form of pneumonia appears to be ineffective in protecting patients who are at high risk of developing the disease, researchers said.

A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine said the vaccine for pneumococcal pneumonia failed to protect patients suffering from other diseases that make them susceptible to the infection. “We were very disappointed,” said Dr. Michael Simberkoff of the Veterans Administration Medical Center in New York.

The study involved 2,295 hospital patients in New York City, Albany, N.Y., Baltimore and Chicago who were at high risk because of their age or because they had heart, kidney or lung disease, diabetes or alcoholism.

In the three-year study, 63 patients suffered 71 episodes of the disease and they were nearly evenly split between those who received the vaccine and those who received a placebo.

Those suffering from chronic diseases are apparently unprotected by the vaccine because their immune systems are so depressed by their other illnesses that they cannot produce the necessary antibodies, the researchers said.

As many as 570,000 cases of pneumococcal pneumonia occur each year in the United States, about half of them in high-risk patients.