A new study found that “in the year before the rollout of the [RSV] vaccine, hospitalization rates among U.S. adults 60 and older were 10 to 17 times the rate of younger adults.” CIDRAP has the news.
RSV vaccines were “first authorized for use in the U.S. in the summer of 2024 for adults 60 and up. Prior to that, a significant proportion of older Americans were at risk every year from severe respiratory infections from the virus, but the exact burden of RSV was hard to estimate in the seasons following the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, as RSV transmission patterns were altered in the wake of non-pharmaceutical pandemic interventions.”
The study considered “all RSV-related hospitalizations at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center from October 1, 2022, through September 30, 2023.” The 1-year testing period saw “21,392 hospitalizations, and RSV was completed for 9,958 of them. RSV was detected in 49 patients.”
The annual incidence rate of RSV-associated hospitalization was 31.5 per 100,000 adults, according to the study. Those rates were “10-fold and 17-fold higher” among adults aged 60 and up. The authors said these findings “support RSV vaccination of older Americans.”
