Daily contact with young children increases the risk of acquiring pneumonia-causing bacteria in elderly adults, a recent study has revealed.
Streptococcus pneumonia or pneumococcus is a bacteria associated with ear and sinus infections and severe diseases such as pneumonia, sepsis, and meningitis. Around two million deaths worldwide every year are associated with pneumococcal infections, primarily affecting children below the age of two and the elderly.
Pneumococcal pneumonia leads to over 150,000 hospitalizations in the USA every year. It is the primary bacterial cause of childhood pneumonia, particularly in children under 5 years old. Among adults, pneumococci contribute to 10% to 30% of cases of community-acquired pneumonia.
Pneumococci bacteria typically live in the respiratory tract of healthy persons which then gets transmitted via respiratory droplets. According to the CDC estimates, around 20% to 60 % of school-age children may be colonized, while only 5% to 10% of adults without children are colonized.
According to the findings of the latest study that will be presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2024) in Barcelona, Spain, adults over the age of 60 who have daily contact with children have six times more risk of being colonized with pneumonia-causing bacteria than those without any contact with children.
To understand the pneumococcal transmission among adults aged 60 and older and the risks of acquiring pneumococcus in the community, researchers conducted a long-term study in New Haven, Connecticut. The participants were elderly adults without young children living in the household.
A total of 183 adults with an average age of 70 from 93 households were enrolled in the study. Researchers collected saliva samples and questionnaire data on social behaviors and health every two weeks across six visits for 10 weeks.
“The analyses found that overall, 52/1,088 (4.8%) samples tested positive for…
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