The respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the main cause of lower respiratory tract infection in newborn babies and is also associated with bronchiolitis, a serious respiratory disease that especially affects young children. It is estimated that around 100,000 children die each year in the world from RSV, mostly in poor countries. But its incidence is also growing in the West and its simultaneous presence with the coronavirus and the flu virus is of particular concern this winter.
Therefore, having an effective vaccine to prevent the spread of RSV is essential to protect the health of children and there are several pharmaceutical companies in the race to get an effective vaccine approved. One of them, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, has just announced that its experimental vaccine against RSV has been shown in a phase III trial to be effective in preventing serious infections by this virus in babies, after it has been administered to pregnant women who were in the second half of gestation during a late-stage study.
According to Pfizer, giving pregnant women their injection prevented 69% of severe RSV symptoms in babies during the first six months of life. Vaccination of expectant mothers was 81.8% effective in preventing severe cases of RSV in the first 90 days of their children’s lives, which is the most vulnerable stage. The pharmaceutical company has admitted that the vaccine did not meet the second main objective of the study, which was to prevent less serious respiratory diseases.
VRS vaccines to protect the vulnerable population
If approved, this drug would become the first available maternal vaccine aimed at reducing the burden of respiratory syncytial virus infection in infants. Pfizer has stopped the trial after obtaining these encouraging results and intends to request approval of the drug from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) at the end of this year.
Vaccination of expectant mothers was 81.8% effective in preventing severe cases of RSV in the first 90 days of their children’s lives
“Maternal immunization takes advantage of the ability to protect the baby from the first day (…) which is important because the peak of hospitalization in these babies due to RSV is around one or two months of age”, he stated in a interview Kena Swanson, vice president of vaccines at Pfizer.
Although in most healthy people the respiratory syncytial virus can be similar to a cold, in the vulnerable population, such as infants and young children, the elderly and patients with certain diseases it can cause pneumonia and have very serious consequences; in fact, GSK also recently announced that its RSV vaccine reduces disease severity in older adults by 94%.
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