Novel Approaches To RSV Infection

Immunization of pregnant women with a vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) offers a potential method of protecting infants against serious RSV disease. Lederle Praxis has reported that its candidate RSV vaccine, PFP-2, is non-reactogenic and highly immunogenic in non-pregnant women, and will be developed further as a potential maternal vaccine.

A clinical study involving 53 women of childbearing age has been carried out by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, USA. This found that the vaccine was effective in stimulating neutralizing antibodies against RSV subtypes A and B; nearly 90% of recipients showed a four-fold increase in neutrophils to the two subtypes.

Meantime, Baylor researchers have found that a high-dose, short-duration treatment course with aerosolized ribavirin may be effective in the treatment of RSV infection. The therapy was given to five bone marrow transplant patients during the 1993-94 RSV outbreak in Houston. Four of the patients had improvements in symptoms while receiving the therapy and survived, while the fifth developed RSV pneumonia and died. The researchers call for further large-scale studies to evaluate the efficacy of this approach.