A new study suggests vaccinating pregnant women protects their newborns from the common but scary respiratory virus called RSV. rsv vaccine health kprc2 click2houston
FILE - This 1981 photo provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows an electron micrograph of Respiratory Syncytial Virus, also known as RSV. New research announced by Pfizer on Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2022, showed vaccinating pregnant women helped protect their newborns from the common but scary respiratory virus that fills hospitals with wheezing babies each fall.
“Moms are always giving their antibodies to their baby,” said virologist Kena Swanson, Pfizer’s vice president of viral vaccines. “The vaccine just puts them in that much better position” to form and pass on RSV-fighting antibodies. “My fingers are crossed,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University. “We’re making inroads.”Here’s a look at the long quest for RSV vaccines.For most healthy people, RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, is a cold-like nuisance. But for the very young, the elderly and people with certain health problems, it can be serious, even life-threatening.
“For a period of 20 years, even though science was advancing, nobody wanted to go near development of an RSV vaccine,” Schaffner said. In 2013, McLellan and virologist Barney Graham were working at the National Institutes of Health when they homed in on the correct shape and figured out how to freeze it in that form. That finding opened the way to today’s development of a variety of experimental RSV vaccine candidates.Several companies are creating RSV vaccines but Pfizer and rival GSK are furthest along. Both companies recently reported final-stage testing in older adults.
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