Doctors Encourage People with Celiac Disease to Get Pneumonia Vaccines

Celiac.com 10/03/2022 - In addition to their usual season pitch to seniors, doctors are recommending that people with celiac disease get a pneumonia vaccine. 

People with celiac disease face a greater risk for pneumonia than non-celiacs. However, about seventy-five percent of celiac patients fail to get a pneumonia vaccine after they are diagnosed, writes a research team in the journal Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

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The recommendation stems from the team's 2016 study, in which the researchers used data on English patients collected between 1997 and 2011, including 9,803 with celiac disease and a comparison group of 101,755 people without celiac.

The study was conducted by F. Zingone, A. Abdul Sultan, C. J. Crooks, L. J. Tata, C. Ciacci, and J. West, who are variously affiliated with the Division of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Nottingham, City Hospital, Nottingham, UK; and the Coeliac center, Department of Medicine and Surgery, University of Salerno, Salerno, Italy.

They found that, even though people with and without celiac disease had pneumonia at similar rates, people under age 65 with a celiac diagnosis, who didn’t get a pneumonia vaccine were nearly thirty-percent more likely to get pneumonia than those who were vaccinated.

The problem may be related to impaired spleen function. Celiac disease can cause spleen issues for up to a third of patients, which may put them at greater risk for infections.

Spleen function does tend to improve for celiacs on a gluten-free diet, which is another reason early diagnosis and quick adoption of a gluten-free diet is essential to a good prognosis.

Dr. Shamez Ladhani of Public Health England in London, who was not involved in the study, told reporters for Reuters that "getting a flu vaccine can also help protect against bacterial infections like pneumonia," and also recommended that patients with spleen problems should get a flu vaccine every year and the pneumonia vaccine every five years.

Read more in Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics