�������ýҕ�l

Pfizer’s experimental vaccine for a respiratory virus called RSV was nearly 86% effective in preventing severe illness in a late-stage clinical trial of older adults, the company announced in a release Thursday. (Lovelace Jr., 8/25)

The vaccine, RSVpreF, was also found to be well-tolerated with no safety concerns in the study. Pfizer's shot is designed to target two strains of the respiratory virus. The company has so far enrolled about 37,000 participants aged 60 and above in its late-stage global study of the vaccine. (8/25)

Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, called the data exciting. “This vaccine will be of enormous benefit to the elderly in preventing severe and occasionally fatal respiratory tract infections,” Offit predicted. “The vaccine will also be important as a maternal vaccine to protect babies in the first six months of life.” (Herper, 8/25)

Each year, about 177,000 older adults are hospitalized due to RSV infection in the US, and 14,000 of these infections lead to death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “RSV is a major burden of illness in elderly or immunocompromised adults,” Amesh A. Adalja, MD, infectious disease expert and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, tells SELF. Currently, there is only a monoclonal antibody injection, called Synagis, that is used to reduce the risk of severe RSV illness in some high-risk babies. But the FDA has not yet approved an RSV vaccine for adults, so Pfizer’s option is on its way to becoming the first to get there. (Miller, 8/25)