A popular stomach-acid reducer used to prevent stress ulcers in critically ill patients needing breathing machine support increases the risk of those patients contracting pneumonia threefold, according to researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

A new vaccine against pneumonia may offer better protection from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients than the currently accepted vaccine, according to recent research that will be published in the September 15 issue of the American Journal of the Respiratory and Critical Care Journal, a publication of the American Thoracic Society.

Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is the main cause of nosocomial infection in patients undergoing major heart surgery. An international study of 25 hospitals from 8 European countries, published in BioMed Central's open access journal Critical Care, has confirmed the degree of danger posed by VAP and identified the main risk factors.

Researchers led by Dr. Pyong Woo Park at Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School found that Staphlococcus aureus & beta toxin causes lung injury in pneumonia. They report their findings in the February 2009 issue of The American Journal of Pathology.

Commonly used pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccines do not appear to be effective for preventing pneumonia, found a study by a team of researchers from Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Hospital-borne infections are a serious risk of a long-term hospital stay, and ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), a lung infection that develops in about 15% of all people who are ventilated, is among the most dangerous.

An analysis of randomized trials indicates that use of inhaled corticosteroids for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) does not improve the rate of survival after one year, but is associated with an increased risk of pneumonia, according to an article in the November 26 issue of JAMA.

Antibiotic treatment for pneumonia in intensive care ‘to be on the safe side’ no longer necessary

Adding corticosteroids to traditional antimicrobial therapy might help people with pneumonia recover more quickly than with antibiotics alone, UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists have found.

Australian hospitals should avoid prescribing expensive broad-spectrum antibiotics for pneumonia to avoid the development of more drug-resistant super bugs, according to a University of Melbourne study.

In 2006, a pneumococcal vaccine (Prevenar®) was introduced in the childhood vaccination programme in Norway. Two years later, the experiences have been published in the journal Vaccine. The results show a strong decline in serious pneumococcal infections among young children.

Although the childhood pneumococcal conjugate vaccine has been a boon in reducing the incidence invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD), the public and the medical community must not get complacent, as non-vaccine strains, some resistant to antibiotics, are on the rise, say scientists at a meeting today in Boston.