The effectiveness and safety of the pneumococcal 13-valent conjugate vaccine (PCV13) was evaluated in a total of 61 patients including (I) patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (n=25, mean age 63.3 years), (2) patients with bronchiectatic disease (n=10, mean age 55.6 years) and (3) patients with a combination of COPD and bronchial asthma (n=26, mean age 60.9 years). Vaccination was well tolerated in all patients thus attesting to vaccine safety. Only 2 patients experienced injection site reaction. The effectiveness of PCV13 vaccine was evaluated at one year post- vaccination. The results obtained demonstrated high efficacy of the PCV13 vaccine in all patient groups: the incidence of COPD exacerbations decreased 4.8-fold in group I, 4.12-fold in group 2 and 2.3-fold in group 3 (p<0.05), the number of pneumonia cases was reduced 6-fold in group I, 4.1-fold in group 2 and 2.3-fold in group 3 and the number of hospital admissions showed a 9-fold, 8-fold (p<0.05) and 2.2-fold decrease, respectively. Vaccinated COPD patients did not demonstrate the characteristic for COPD decline in FEV1 but, conversely, this parameter increased during the first post-vaccination year, i.e., FEV1 increased from 44.97±17.39 to 49.49±19.5, FVC from 66.87±18.08 to 75.98±23.51 and FEV1/FVC from 52.68±14.43 to 53.11±18.01 (pre- and post-vaccination values, respectively). Therefore, the use of PCV13 for vaccination of patients with chronic airways diseases aged 50 years or over will enable to reduce morbidity caused by severe invasive pneumococcal infections and pneumonia and, hence, help bring down cost of healthcare and increase life expectancy and quality of life of such patients.
Ignatova et al. (Mon,) studied this question.