Pfizer made a big announcement this week: The pharmaceutical company has developed an experimental vaccine to target respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)—and the results have been promising. According to Pfizer, a late-stage clinical trial found that the vaccine, called RSVpreF, was 85.7% effective in preventing severe illness in older adults.
The vaccine, which has caused no safety concerns so far, was also about 67% effective in preventing mild illness from RSV in the 37,000 people aged 60 and up who were enrolled in the trial. “These findings are an important step in our effort to help protect against RSV disease, and we look forward to working with the FDA and other regulatory agencies to make this vaccine candidate available to help address the substantial burden of RSV disease in older adults,” Annaliesa Anderson, PhD, senior vice president and chief scientific officer of vaccine research and development at Pfizer, said in a press release.
Each year, about 177,000 older adults are hospitalized due to RSV infection in the US, and 14,000 of these infections lead to death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “RSV is a major burden of illness in elderly or immunocompromised adults,” Amesh A. Adalja, MD, infectious disease expert and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, tells SELF.
Currently, there is only a monoclonal antibody injection, called Synagis, that is used to reduce the risk of severe RSV illness in some high-risk babies. But the FDA has not yet approved an RSV vaccine for adults, so Pfizer’s option is on its way to becoming the first to get there.
Why are doctors talking about RSV lately?
RSV is a common childhood virus that infects most people by the age of two, according to the CDC. But the illness can impact anyone at any time, and it can lead to serious health complications in very young or older people.
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“Many of us were taught in medical school that RSV was primarily a virus that infected children,” William Schaffner, MD, infectious disease specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, tells SELF. “But over the last 20 years, we learned that it also causes infections that are serious in adults.”
RSV spreads like many other respiratory viruses: when an infected person coughs or sneezes; when you get virus droplets from a cough or sneeze in your eyes, nose, or mouth; when you touch a surface that has the virus on it and then touch your face without washing your hands; or when you have direct contact with the virus, the CDC says. RSV typically causes cold-like symptoms like a runny nose, a decrease in appetite, coughing, sneezing, fever, and wheezing.
However, in high-risk people, it can also trigger serious infections like bronchiolitis, an inflammation of the small airways in the lung, and pneumonia, an infection of the lungs. Either of these can lead to hospitalization; in the most severe cases, someone may need supplemental oxygen or intubation.
How does Pfizer’s RSV vaccine work? Is it effective?
Pfizer’s RSV vaccine is a single-dose protein-based vaccine that makes use of the structure of prefusion F, a form of the viral protein that RSV uses to invade human cells. Research previously conducted by the National Institutes of Health showed that antibodies specific to this protein “were highly effective at blocking virus infection,” according to Pfizer’s statement.
Source: SELF
