Bivalent RSV prefusion F vaccine (Abrysvo) demonstrated 90% vaccine efficacy (VE) against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)-related hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits in high-risk adults . IDWeek Annual Meeting held in Los Angeles.
In this exclusive MedPage Today video, Sara Tartof, MD, MPH, of Kaiser Permanente in Pasadena, California, discusses key findings and the importance of real-world efficacy in supporting current vaccine recommendations for high-risk populations. Let’s talk about gender.
Below is a transcript of her remarks.
The study’s key findings are that the real-world VE of Abrysvo during the first 5 months of use for severe ARIs (acute respiratory infections) in hospital or ED settings in U.S. adults aged 60 years and older This is estimated to be 90%.
This study is particularly important at this time because, compared to the clinical trial RENOIR, we are targeting substantially more patients at risk for severe RSV, including older adults, immunocompromised adults, and adults with greater overall comorbidity. I think a lot of people were included in the actual study. And, you know, clinical trials tend to have more controlled study populations, and I think what we found in this study is that even in real-world use, the VE is very high.
For RSV in particular, one of the main research challenges is the low level of testing in healthcare settings, in contrast to the novel coronavirus and influenza, which are tested much more frequently. RSV testing may be performed in specific settings. For example, in our setting, RSV testing is restricted to the elderly, so hospitals use multiplex panels.
One way to reduce the impact of this type of limited testing was to collect the swabs used for coronavirus and influenza tests. Those swabs were then tested for RSV using the same multiplex panel used for standard of care. So this was just one way to overcome what I feel is one of the major challenges to RSV research.
Another challenge we found in the first season was that vaccine uptake was pretty low overall. What we’re looking forward to in the second season is that I think the new recommendations are a little bit more clear compared to shared clinical decision-making, which is a little bit more complicated and harder to implement for healthcare providers. That’s what we expect. Higher vaccine uptake. Therefore, we expect that not only will evaluation take many more years, but that more patients will be vaccinated.
We did not specifically stratify the analysis by immunocompromised patients. We didn’t have the statistical power at this point, but with 16% of the population being immunocompromised and 76% of the population, I think we can make some comment on the effectiveness of the vaccine in immunocompromised patients. Charlson Index score of 3 or higher. Therefore, although we had a clinically very high-risk population, we still obtained these high VE estimates. But again, as the season progresses, we would like to analyze VE specifically for the immunocompromised population, as statistical power increases as we are able to obtain higher numbers.
These findings provide practical support for current recommendations. So the current recommendations are targeted at high-risk populations, and what we’re finding is that the vaccine appears to be effective in these high-risk populations. So I think it’s also very important to have real-world data to support our current recommendations, especially for new vaccine products.
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disclosure
This study was funded by Pfizer.
Tartov disclosed institutional funding from Pfizer and GSK.
primary source
ID week
References: Tartof SY et al. Real-world Abrysvo vaccine efficacy (VE) on respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)-associated severe acute respiratory infection (ARI) hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits — in Southern California Kaiser Permanente (KPSC), November 2023-April 2024” IDWeek 2024.
