Link Found Between Smoking And Risk For Bacterial Pneumonia
Quitting smoking reduces HIV-positive individuals’ likelihood of contracting bacterial pneumonia, a new study has found.
Patients of a group called the ANRS CO3 Aquitaine Cohort who visited participating AIDS clinics in France at least twice between 2000 and 2007 were tracked for the purposes of the study.
Those enrolled in the study did not have bacterial pneumonia at their first visit and researchers had access to participants’ tobacco-consumption status throughout the course of the investigation.
At the conclusion of the study, patients who smoked were more than twice as likely to contract bacterial pneumonia as former smokers. Compared to those who never smoked, HIV-positive smokers were nearly three times as likely to have contracted bacterial pneumonia.
Researchers found that patients who smoked had a significantly greater chance of contracting bacterial pneumonia regardless of their level of HIV
Bacterial pneumonia has been thought to exercise a considerable effect on disease levels and mortality in HIV-positive populations, although that relationship between quitting smoking and bacterial pneumonia had not been quantified prior to this study.
Even in the era of antiretroviral therapy, bacterial pneumonia remains an opportunistic disease, which is one that only infests unhealthy immune systems, such as those with HIV.
Bacterial pneumonia strikes those with HIV at higher rates than the population at large, even those patients responding well to treatment.
HIV-positive individuals are more likely to experience recurring bouts of pneumonia, and those with more advanced cases of HIV disease progression face a greater chance of dying as a result of bacterial pneumonia.
HIV-positive people are not only more likely to develop bacterial pneumonia as a result of one of these infections, but also more likely to experience recurrent pneumonia.
Individuals with CD4 (white blood cell) counts below 100, and those whose bacterial infection has spread beyond the lungs, are at increased risk of death from bacterial pneumonia.
Since the relationship between quitting smoking and decreased incidences of bacterial pneumonia in HIV-positive individuals has so clearly been quantified, researchers suggest that smoking cessation strategies should be a crucial part of care for those with HIV.
For more information, please see the original PLoS ONE article.
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