5

I have an old relative in her 70s who took some vaccination jabs 2 years ago. She has no idea what jab it was due to her aging mind. I intend to bring her to take pneumococcal vaccine to protect against pneumonia but I do not know if she took the same vaccine 2 years ago.

Is it dangerous for an old lady to take pneumococcal vaccine twice within 2 years? Any over-dosage hazard to be mindful of?

user781486
  • 693
  • 1
  • 5
  • 8

2 Answers2

4

We can't give personal advice but the CDC does give generic advice, and talks about people over the age of 65 with uncertain immunization status.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/pneumo/downloads/pneumo-vaccine-timing.pdf

enter image description here

And in general, the elderly and others with impaired immune systems often require more frequent dosing of vaccines to ensure immunity is maintained.

Graham Chiu
  • 13,257
  • 1
  • 21
  • 64
2

I think this is likely to be benign. The OP does not say how long the interval between the injections was, but let us presume it was at least several weeks.

When we do catch up immunizations for infants, they often get spaced at roughly monthly intervals without ill effect. And the mechanistic idea of vaccines seems to suggest that a second dose would have few ill effects. (There would be very little difference between a second dose of vaccine and an encounter with wild type virus. The whole idea of the vaccine is that encountering the virus again will not make you sick.)