IStock Photo 6297738 © Linde Stewart

Flu season is especially virulent this year, and another potentially deadly illness often comes with flu: community-acquired pneumonia. The flu and pneumonia together have been the 7th leading cause of death in the United States for the last decade.

Although the thought of an influenza pandemic and ensuing pneumonia is frightening, the odds a person will die from pneumonia in a year are 1 in 5,282. That’s the same as the number of feet in a mile (5,280)—so in an imaginary mile-long line of people (a very tightly packed line), one will die of pneumonia that year. It’s more than twice as likely a person will die from an accident in a year (1 in 2,462).

A lung illness with many causes—bacterial, viral, fungal, and others—pneumonia can affect people of all ages, although it tends to be more dangerous for the very young and very old. Death can occur when a patient can no longer breathe properly, or, especially in bacterial cases, septic shock can kill organs and lead to death.

Many cases of pneumonia are contracted by patients already in the hospital for other reasons. The term “community-acquired” is applied to cases when the pneumonia patient has not been hospitalized recently. The illness is the same, but the sources are not.

We are currently in a global influenza pandemic, according to the World Health Organization. A 2008 article in Future Microbiology warns that bacterial pneumonia following influenza is a re-emerging problem, and that some common treatment options might actually worsen a patient’s prognosis. Aggressively attacking bacteria while the immune system is already fighting influenza, the article argues, may lead to increased inflammatory lung damage. Yet for the past 80 years the accepted treatment has been “to kill the invading organisms as quickly and thoroughly as possible.”

Due to the difficulties of treating pneumonia caused by influenza, prevention of one or both illnesses might be an easier solution. Fortunately, many people in high risk populations (infants and elderly) already do get vaccinated against Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus), one of the most common causes of bacterial pneumonia. The odds an adult 65 or older has ever been vaccinated against pneumococcus are 1 in 1.52 (66%), and the odds a child younger than 24 months has been vaccinated against pneumococcus are 1 in 1.14 (88%).

Women are slightly more likely to die from pneumonia than men: the odds a female will die from pneumonia in a year are 1 in 4,959; for men, it’s 1 in 5,667. Women might be able to bend those odds, though. A longitudinal study from Japan published in the September 2009 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that women may be able to decrease their risk of dying of pneumonia by drinking green tea, even a cup or less per day.