Lurking Bacteria Raise Risks From Swine Flu

Get ready to roll up your sleeve for another shot. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, already on guard against the flu, is expected to urge millions of Americans to get vaccinated against yet another dangerous lung infection.

A new CDC analysis shows that many people who died this spring of swine flu also had bacterial pneumonia, most often caused by Strep pneumoniae, or pneumococcus.

Such dual infections were often seen in 20th-century flu pandemics. But they hadn't been documented in the early swine flu cases until now. "They are clearly occurring," says Dr. Matthew Moore of the CDC, who briefed doctors on the new danger Monday morning.

 

The CDC analyzed autopsy tissue from 77 people who died of the new H1N1 flu. Of these, 29 percent were infected with flu virus and various bacteria, most often pneumococcus.

That may not represent the rate of these dual infections among swine flu deaths generally, but they're probably not rare. "It sort of changes the game," Moore says of the new data, which will be published soon in the CDC's weekly Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Most of the 77 deaths in the sample were among young and middle-aged adults with common medical conditions, such as asthma and diabetes.

Moore says doctors who treat severe cases of swine flu should use antibiotics as well as antiviral drugs if they see evidence of pneumonia on a chest x-ray.

The other big implication: Americans who are at risk of pneumococcal disease should ask their doctors right away about getting vaccinated against the disease. That adds up to 70 million people.

But among those at risk between 18 and 49 — the prime ages for swine flu — only 16 percent have been vaccinated against pneumococcus so far.