Other than childbirth, pneumonia is the most common cause for hospital admissions in the United States, according to the American Thoracic Society.

More than 53,000 Americans die each year from the disease, and 90 percent of deaths occur in people 65 years of age and older.

What if a common supplement could change those numbers?

According to research from the University of Helsinki, vitamin E could reduce the risk of pneumonia up to 72 percent.

Dr. Harri Hemila and colleagues studied the data of a randomized trial comprised of almost 7,500 male smokers 50 to 69 years of age.

They found that vitamin E decreased the risk of pneumonia by 35 percent in smokers who began smoking at 21 years of age or older, but had no effect on those who had started smoking at an earlier age.

Men who began smoking at a later age and smoked lightly plus exercised in their leisure time, reduced their risk of pneumonia by 69 percent.

For those who had smoked but quit, vitamin E supplementation had an even better effect — the incidence of pneumonia was 72 percent lower.

Pneumonia can be caused by a variety of microbes, and the specific microbe causing the infection is usually never identified.

Death rates from pneumonia in the U.S. have seen little improvement since antibiotics became common in the middle of the last century.