Post-hoc analysis of a randomized controlled trial: Diabetes mellitus modifies the efficacy of the 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in elderly

Background: The 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate-vaccine (PCV13) was effective in preventing vaccine-type Community-Acquired Pneumonia (VT-CAP) and Invasive Pneumococcal Disease (VT-IPD) in elderly subjects, but vaccine efficacy (VE) in patients with comorbidities at time of vaccination is unknown. Methods: This is a post hoc analysis of the CAPiTA study, a double blind, randomized controlled trial with 84,496 immunocompetent participants aged >= 65years, receiving PCV13 or placebo vaccination. Presence of diabetes mellitus (DM), heart disease, respiratory disease, liver disease, asplenia, and smoking at the time of immunization was verified on medical records in 139 subjects developing the primary end-point of VT-CAP. Presence of DM and respiratory disease based on International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC) coding was also determined in 40,427 subjects. Findings: In the 139 subjects developing VT-CAP, DM caused significant effect modification (p-value 0.002), yielding VE of 89.5% (95%Cl, 65.5-96.8) and 24.7% (95%Cl, -10.4 to 48.7) for those with and without DM, respectively. Comparable effect modification (p-value 0.020) was found in the 40,427 subjects with and without ICPC-based classification of DM with VE of 85.6% (95%Cl, 36.7-96.7) and of 7.0% (95%Cl, -58.5 to 45.5) respectively. Effect modification through respiratory disease was not statistically significant, although the point estimate of VE was lower for those with respiratory disease in both analyses. There was no evidence of effect modification in subjects stratified by heart disease, smoking, and presence of any comorbidity. Conclusions: Among immunocompetent elderly, VE of PCV13 was modified by DM with higher VE among subjects with DM. Significant effect modification was not observed for subjects with heart disease, respiratory disease, smoking, or presence of any comorbidity. Conclusions: CAPiTA trial registration number: www.ClinicalTrials.gov; trial number NCT00744263. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.