Effect of Chemotherapy on Pneumonia in Infants Under One Year of Age

Abstract

The mortality from pneumonia in childhood has always been greatest in infancy. In the infant ward at Cook County Hospital many patients with pneumonia are treated, and the mortality has always been high. In 1937 and 1938, before chemotherapy was used, the mortality rates were 32 per cent and 31 per cent respectively. The infants, all under 1 year of age, were drawn from essentially the same group and were treated by the same medical personnel and with the same therapeutic measures other than specific chemotherapy as the 1940 series which is the subject of this paper. While it is true that the incidence and mortality of pneumonia vary somewhat from season to season, these figures at least serve as a base line from which some conclusions can be drawn with regard to a human experiment in which adequate control is practically impossible.With the advent of specific therapy, particularly specific chemotherapy, there was a distinct change in the outlook for babies with pneumonia. Serum therapy never was of outstanding value for this age group because of the difficulties encountered in obtaining and typing organisms. The administration of sulfapyridine (2-[paraaminobenzenesulfonamidoj-pyridine), however, could be initiated quickly, without the necessity of knowing the exact organism present in a given case. This report consists of an analysis of the results obtained for a series of 289 infants observed from March 1939 to July 1940, to whom sulfapyridine was given.In the past few years a considerable amount of literature has accumulated relating to the use of sulfapyridine or related compounds in the therapy of pneumonia. In general, the results have shown a Read at a meeting of the Chicago Pediatric Society, Jan. 21, 1941.

Fertility and Labor Market Responses to Reductions in Mortality

“…For example, the all-age mortality rate from skin diseases in the U.S. was 1.8 per 1000 in 1930, and from meningitis 2.1, compared to an all-cause infant mortality rate of 69 (Vital Statistics). morbidity (Greengard et al 1943, Hodes et al 1939, Moody and Knouf 1940. Prior to the introduction of antibiotics, pneumonia was a debilitating disease with typical spells often lasting 39 days and children tending to have recurrent spells (Britten 1942).…”

The Captain of the Men of Death and His Shadow: Long-Run Impacts of Early Life Pneumonia Exposure

“…These agents were the first clinically available antibiotics and were quickly utilized to treat a variety of potentially fatal bacterial infections. Their arrival was responsible for sharp decreases in morbidity and mortality from pneumonia (Greengard et al, 1943;Lesch, 2007;Jayachandran et al, 2010). Together with the quasi-experimental cohort variation generated by the sudden and plausibly exogenous arrival of sulfa drugs, our research strategy exploits the fact that states most burdened by pneumonia in the pre-sulfa era experienced the largest declines upon the introduction of sulfa.…”

“…shorter in duration and followed a less severe course as a result of sulfa chemotherapy (Hodes et al, 1939;Smith and Nemir, 1939;Moody and Knouf, 1940;Greengard et al, 1943). Data on industrial workers illustrate a 20-30% reduction in the number of illness days after the arrival of sulfa drugs (Ungerleider et al, 1943).…”

Editorial: The Gambian pneumococcal vaccine trial – implications for control of childhood pneumonia

“…The late 1930s saw the development of the first antibiotics, the sulphonamides, which were followed by penicillin and chloramphenicol (King 1944; Greengard et al. 1941).…”

“…The late 1930s saw the development of the first antibiotics, the sulphonamides, which were followed by penicillin and chloramphenicol (King 1944;Greengard et al 1941). For the first time pneumococcal pneumonia was easily treatable, and as a result vaccine development virtually ceased.…”