The CDC’s vaccine advisory committee recommends all adult cigarette smokers should get the pneumococcal vaccine. The panel previously advises that as of 2009, adults with asthma should get the vaccine. Adults aged 65 or over and those with chronic sickness are already recommended to get the vaccine.

But more than half of serious invasive pneumococcal diseases happen in people who smoke cigarettes. Smoking just one cigarette a day increases doubly pneumococcal pneumonia risk. There’s nearly a fourfold higher risk in those who smoke 15 to 24 cigarettes a day. More than 24 cigarettes a day increases risk 5.5-fold. Risk increases with number of packs of cigarettes smoked and years of smoking.

During its prudence, members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) wondered whether risk could already be elevated in 19-year-old smokers. However, the panel voted to create a clear recommendation for all smokers, advising the vaccine for all smokers aged 19 and older.

Doctors, who offer the vaccine to smokers, should also offer counseling on giving up smoking.

Currently, vaccination with pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine is recommended for:

• Everyone 2 and older with chronic medical conditions such as chronic lung, diabetes, heart, liver or kidney disease, or alcoholism
• All adults 65 or older
• People without a functioning spleen
• People over 2 whose immune systems have been weakened by such conditions as cancer or HIV infection
• People with sickle cell disease

The Center for Disease Control usually follows the recommendation of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.