A vaccine designed to prevent bacterial pneumonia also reduced the number of virus-related cases of the disease, according to research that indicates the two types of infection may interact. In tests in more than 37,000 children in South Africa, the pneumococcal vaccine also prevented 31 percent of pneumonia associated with any of seven respiratory viruses, researchers said. Their results were reported in this week’s online edition of the journal Nature Medicine. The discovery that the bacterial vaccine also blocks some viral illness indicates that “bacteria and viruses can interact together to cause disease in humans,” said Keith P. Klugman, a professor of infectious disease at Emory University in Atlanta who led the team of researchers.
