Does Pneumococcal Vaccination Protect People Using Long-Term Immunosuppressive Agents?

We know that people with rheumatic illness who take long-term immunosuppressant drugs have an excess risk for pneumococcal infection, but evidence confirming that pneumococcal vaccination lowers that risk is hard to come by. Although trials do show that vaccines raise antibody levels in this population, few studies have addressed actual clinical outcomes.

Researchers in the U.K. probed a large clinical database for rates of respiratory infection among 90,000 people with rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), spondyloarthritis, or systemic lupus erythematosus between 1997 and 2019 who were receiving long-term non–glucocorticoid-based immunosuppression. Three nested case-control analyses showed that receipt of pneumococcal vac…