More about pneumococcus

This page provides links to PATH's work on pneumococcus and information about the disease and related vaccines.

On the PATH website

• Developing new vaccines against pneumococcal disease for the developing world.

Pneumococcal disease

• The pneumococcus bacterium (Streptococcus pneumoniae) is responsible for up to one million deaths of children less than five years old each year and may be responsible for up to 20 percent of child deaths worldwide. It can cause pneumonia, meningitis (inflammation of the covering of the brain), ear infections, and bacteremia (blood stream infection). Children less than two years old are especially vulnerable to infection and more than 90 percent of pneumococcal pneumonia deaths in children occur in developing countries.
• The bacteria normally are carried in the nose or upper throat and are spread through sneezing, coughing, or speaking closely with an infected person. Thirty to forty percent of children carry the bacteria without showing any signs or symptoms, but they can still infect others.
• Drugs such as penicillin are generally effective for treating pneumococcal disease, but antibiotic-resistant pneumococcus is becoming more common worldwide. This situation makes prevention of the disease, through widespread use of pneumococcal vaccines, even more important.

Pneumococcal vaccines

• Prevnar®, a pneumococcal vaccine produced by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, is licensed for use in infants and young children and is effective against the seven serotypes most prevalent in the industrialized world.
• GlaxoSmithKline's Synflorix® and Wyeth's Prevnar 13 Valent®, two other pediatric pneumococcal vaccines, offer broader protection against 10 and 13 serotypes respectively, but they are not widely approved.
• Many other vaccine candidates are also in the development pipeline.
• Current pneumococcal vaccines, even with added strain coverage, do not protect against all 90+ pneumococcal serotypes and they are complex and expensive to manufacture.
• Pneumococcal protein vaccines are being developed to be more affordable, as well as to potentially protect against most or all of the disease-causing serotypes of pneumococcus.

Related diseases

There are several key causes of childhood pneumonia and meningitis (inflammation of the covering of the brain), including pneumococcus, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), and meningococcus bacteria. Learn more about Hib. Learn more about meningococcus.

References

• PneumoADIP.
• US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Streptococcus pneumoniae Disease.
• World Health Organization. Streptococcus pneumoniae.

Page last updated: July 2009.