Pneumococcal disease is caused by a strain of bacteria known as Streptococcus pneumoniae. This strain of bacteria is also responsible for causing various complications in the body. The bacteria infect the lungs affecting the alveoli to cause pneumoniae, sepsis in the bloodstream, and meningitis in the brain. The bacteria also cause sinus infections and otitis, which affects the middle ear. Pneumococcal disease is one of the leading health complications that affect people globally, causing more than a million infections in the United States and high mortality rates. The infection can be hospital-acquired pneumonia in that it affects people in health facilities or community-acquired pneumonia, which implies that the infection is acquired outside the hospital vicinity. Some risk factors predisposing individuals to the illness include activities like cigarette smoking, complications like dementia, cirrhosis, brain injury, cerebral palsy, chronic lung diseases, and some surgeries. People with asplenia are individuals without a functioning spleen, or those who lack it due to surgical procedures can also get the disease(Cotton & Packer, 2018). The spleen plays a vital role in the body by fighting infections.
Pneumococcal pneumonia mainly affects the lungs, which can be life-threatening. The infection causes symptoms like coughs, fever, chest pain, and difficulty in breathing. This infection is mainly treated through antibiotics. Most pneumococcal diseases are resistant to antibiotics making some treatments only effective by applying a broad spectrum of antibiotics. Some vaccines help prevent some infections such as meningitis and bacteremia. Although the vaccines cannot prevent all pneumococcal diseases, they can lower the severity of the infection. The PCV13 vaccine is used to prevent thirteen stereotypes of the disease and is mainly given to infants (Zintgraff et al., 2020). The PPSV23 vaccine protects individuals against 23 types of bacteria caused by pneumococcal disease and is mainly recommended for adult use (Zintgraff et al., 2020). Individuals infected with coronavirus disease are at high risk of developing pneumonia. Physicians COVID-19 pneumonia is more deadly than pneumococcal since it causes more complications and harm to the lungs (Chan et al., 2021). Other pneumococcal diseases affect large regions within the lungs, while COVID-19 pneumonia affects small regions and causes the immune cells to spread the infection in the whole region.
References
Chan, K. F., Ma, T., Ip, M. S., & Ho, P. (2021). Invasive pneumococcal disease, pneumococcal pneumonia, and all-cause pneumonia in Hong Kong during the COVID-19 pandemic compared with the preceding five years: A retrospective observational study. BMJ Open, 11(10), e055575. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-055575
Cotton, M. J., & Packer, C. D. (2018). Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium empyema in an Asplenic patient. Cureus. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.3227
Zintgraff, J., Fossati, S., Pereira, C. S., Veliz, O., Regueira, M., Moscoloni, M. A., Irazu, L., Lara, C., & Napoli, D. (2020). Distribution of PCV13 and PPSV23 Streptococcus pneumoniae serotypes in Argentinean adults with invasive disease, 2013–2017. Revista Argentina de Microbiología, 52(3), 189-194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ram.2019.11.004
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