RSV Pediatric Vaccine Candidate Shows Promise in Early Clinical Trial

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and MedImmune, LLC, have developed a vaccine candidate to protect infants and young children against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) that appears to elicit a stronger protective immune response than the previous lead vaccine candidate. RSV is the most common cause of lower respiratory tract infections—including pneumonia and bronchiolitis—among young children worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Each year in the United States, RSV leads to an average of about 55,000 hospitalizations among children younger than 5 years, with most hospitalizations occurring among infants younger than 6 months. There is currently no approved vaccine to prevent RSV infection.