Based on preliminary clinical trial data, two experimental vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus, a major cause of infant mortality around the world, seem to offer robust protection to the groups most at risk from the pathogen: newborn children and elderly adults. The dual announcements represent the most promising progress toward a vaccine for RSV to date, according to the Associated Press, following decades of roadblocks—and reluctance among pharmaceutical companies to tackle the problem after earlier clinical trials failed.
RSV is a seasonal virus that typically spreads in the fall and winter. It poses a mild, cold-like annoyance to most otherwise healthy adults, according to the AP, but each year it hospitalizes roughly 58,000 children under the age of five (several hundred of whom die from the disease) in the US, and it kills roughly 100,000 children around the world. The virus also hospitalizes approximately 177,000 and kills 14,000 adults over ...
