2023-08-25 14:14:24
The European Commission announced on Friday that it has authorized the marketing of a first vaccine administered to pregnant women to protect babies against bronchiolitis, an infection of the respiratory tract.
The vaccine from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, marketed under the name Abrysvo, targets respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which particularly affects young children.
This vaccine, intended to protect both future infants via their mother and people aged 60 and over, was approved in July by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
In the United States, this vaccine had been approved since May for people aged 60 and over. The country also authorized it on Monday for pregnant women.
“As we approach fall and winter, this vaccine can help prevent the serious consequences of RSV for our most vulnerable citizens. This is particularly important for our children, for whom RSV is one of the main causes of hospitalization in the EU”, commented the European Commissioner for Health, Stella Kyriakides, in a press release.
Very contagious, the respiratory syncytial virus can cause, in its most severe forms, pneumonia and bronchiolitis which cause thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations worldwide.
After the flu and Covid-19, the major laboratories are in working order to launch RSV vaccines in the fall, before the epidemic period.
The Arexvy from the British laboratory GSK has already been available in the United States since May and in the European Union since June for people over 60.
The European Union and the United States have also recently authorized a preventive treatment for bronchiolitis developed jointly by AstraZeneca and Sanofi. Intended for infants, nirsevimab (marketed under the name Beyfortus) is not strictly speaking a vaccine, but works with the same preventive intention.
Abrysvo has been assessed under the EMA’s accelerated assessment mechanism, as the prevention of RSV infections is considered by European authorities to be of ‘major public health interest’.
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