THURSDAY, Sept. 5, 2024 (HealthDay News) — For older adults, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccination is effective against RSV hospitalization, according to a study published online Sept. 4 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Diya Surie, M.D., from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and colleagues examined RSV vaccine effectiveness (VE) against RSV-associated hospitalization among adults aged 60 years and older. Adults hospitalized with acute respiratory illness at one of 24 hospitals in 19 U.S. states participating in a surveillance network from Oct. 1, 2023, to March 31, 2024, were eligible for inclusion in the study. Data were analyzed for 367 RSV case patients and 2,611 control patients, all aged 60 years and older.

The researchers found that 72.9 percent of the RSV case patients with known RSV subtype were RSV B. Overall, nine case patients and 256 control patients were vaccinated (2.5 versus 9.8 percent), with a median of 84 days between vaccination and illness onset. Vaccinated patients were more frequently older, White, and immunocompromised, were more likely to have outpatient visits in the past year, and were more likely to live in communities with a lower Social Vulnerability Index score compared with unvaccinated patients. VE against RSV hospitalization was 75 percent, with no difference seen when estimated with inverse probability of vaccination weighting or among adults aged 60 to 74 years or those aged 75 years and older (79, 75, and 76 percent, respectively).

“Among adults aged 60 years and older in 19 U.S. states, RSV vaccination was associated with a reduced likelihood of hospitalization with RSV compared with no vaccination,” the authors write. “This study provides initial data to inform ongoing risk-benefit analyses of RSV vaccines for older adults.”

One author disclosed ties to Syneos Health.

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