Pneumonia is an infection in the air sacs of the lungs. For anyone with a weakened immune system, it can be life-threatening.  This would include very young children, people with compromised immunity, and those older than 65 whose immune systems are in decline. For the elderly, pneumonia is the leading cause of death due to infectious disease.

But here’s some great news for those on the far side of middle age.  A 2015 study found supplementing with vitamin E may give you the same resistance to pneumonia enjoyed by youngsters!

As we age, our immune systems not only become less responsive, they make more mistakes. This overall decline is called “immunosenescence,” and it occurs in older animals as well as in older humans.

The study compared young with old mice infected with the most common cause of pneumonia, the bacteria S. pneumoniae.  In both, immune cells were rushed to the lungs to address the infection. But in the older mice, this response was “overly exuberant.”  Too many immune cells caused too much tissue-destroying inflammation and got in the way of clearing the infection.

But when the aging mice were supplemented with vitamin E for 4 weeks prior to infection, their immune response was “indistinguishable” from that of their young associates.

Compared to non-supplemented older mice, the bacterial count in their lungs was 1,000 times lower and the spread of bacteria into general circulation was drastically reduced. In over half of the non-supplemented older mice, bacteria spread to the brain, but the supplemented mice had no brain infection.

Vitamin E has a long history of protecting both the lungs and the immune system.  Studies show it protects the lungs from air pollution, slows age-related lung function decline, lessens lung inflammation in allergies, reduces the risk of lung cancer and all types of respiratory diseases, and improves lung function.

Vitamin E has also been shown to enhance both innate and acquired immunity, while even a marginal deficiency impairs the immune response.