RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus) is a common respiratory virus that produces cold-like symptoms. While the illness is typically mild for healthy adults, infants are especially susceptible to severe illness. This past winter, an estimated 43.4 percent of illnesses resulted in hospitalization, with the majority of those being children under one year of age. Additionally, an estimated 300 U.S. deaths occur each year because of RSV.
Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted in favor of a vaccine that may help prevent illness in babies. If approved, it will be the first vaccine designed to protect infants from the potentially fatal illness. This news comes just one month after a study on the vaccine.
Researchers gave 3,682 women the vaccine and another 3,676 a placebo. Overall, the vaccine was found to have an efficacy rate of nearly 82 percent. Within 90 days of birth, a total of 33 babies were diagnosed with a severe lower respiratory tract infection in the placebo group. In comparison, only 6 babies in the vaccine group received the same diagnoses.
The efficacy of the vaccine was found to wane over time, dropping to 69 percent at six months after birth. However, this is still a significant reduction in illness rate—and it still targets the age group that is most at risk.
“It’s critically important to have this vaccine in the pediatric age group,” Dr. Thomas Russo, a professor and chief of infectious diseases at the University at Buffalo in New York, tells Yahoo Life. “The zero to 6-month age group — along with older adults — are at the greatest risk for severe disease and serious outcomes from RSV.”
The vaccine was given to mothers during pregnancy because the immune systems of infants are still extremely immature. If given directly to the newborn, there could be severe side effects. Administering it to the mother allows the antibodies to cross through the placenta and into the baby, offering them some protection from RSV for the first few months of life.
“The idea is that we’ll vaccinate pregnant women, and they’ll make the antibodies that will cross the placenta and offer the baby protection for the first few months of life,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist and professor of medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, tells Yahoo Life.
No major safety concerns were reported from the vaccine itself, and although the rate of premature birth was slightly higher in the vaccine group (5.6% compared to 4.7% in the placebo group), study authors say this is not statistically significant. For these reasons, experts believe the vaccine will pass through FDA approval.
“The one fly in the ointment is the numerical imbalance of premature birth in the vaccinated group,” Russo says. “It wasn’t statistically significant, but often we don’t know if this was by chance or not in groups this small.”
Schaffner estimates that it will be available to pregnant mothers before the next season hits.
We have one for adults aged 60 and older. It may well be that we’ll have an RSV vaccine for pregnant women also — that would be very exciting,” he says.
He adds that an RSV vaccine for pregnant women is sorely needed. “RSV is the last of the important seasonal viruses for which we don’t have a vaccine,” he says. “We have one for flu and COVID, and RSV is one that causes an awful lot of illness.”
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