The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccine for the respiratory syncytial virus, known as RSV, for adults 60 and older.
Although it will be several months until the vaccine is actually available to the public, this vaccine, which culminated after decades of research, is aimed at protecting the 14,000 older people who die from RSV every year, and the 170,000 who are hospitalized.
Dr. Kimberly Shriner, an infectious disease specialist at Huntington Hospital, joined LAist’s public affairs show AirTalk to discuss this development and what it could mean for the thousands who are afflicted with RSV each year.
Why now
RSV became a household name recently, especially during the “tripledemic” of winter 2022 — the colloquial term for the collision of COVID-19, RSV and flu cases that overwhelmed hospitals.
RSV is particularly dangerous for older adults and for very young children, Shriner says, as it takes advantage of their less robust immune systems.
The technology of the RSV vaccine has been decades in the making. A recent breakthrough in identifying the process by which the virus attaches to human cells changed the trajectory of the vaccine, she says, and the outcomes have been promising.
About the vaccine and its approval
The ongoing Phase 3 trials indicate that the vaccine can decrease disease state and risk of death in over 80% of individuals above 60 years old.
Dr. Shriner says the FDA collaborates with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to do a deep dive into the data that pharmaceutical companies present them, weigh the benefits and adverse effects and…
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