Abstract
To the Editor.— The COMMENTARY by James M. Moss, MD (1980;243:2301), entitled Pneumococcus Infection in Diabetes Mellitus: Is This a Justification for Immunization? concluded that diabetes is not a valid indication for pneumococcal vaccination because excess risk for development of the disease among diabetics has not been established. I do not think that this conclusion is warranted for several reasons. First, direct extrapolation of animal data to humans is problematical. Citation of the study of Dolkart et al1examining antibody response among alloxan diabetic mice as proof of the contention that there is no measureable decrease in antibody response among diabetic humans may or may not be accurate. Richardson2studied diabetic patients and reported that antibody response to typhoid vaccine was impaired. However, we recently found that these patients do respond as well as control subjects to pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine.3There are little or no data available
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