Nursing home residents who received an RSV vaccine were 73 percent less likely to be hospitalized with the virus and 56 percent less likely to die from it, according to a study of nearly 600,000 Medicare beneficiaries published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The finding lands weeks before respiratory virus season, and it addresses a population that has been largely missing from the evidence base. Clinical trials of RSV vaccines enrolled community-dwelling older adults. Residents of long-term care facilities are frailer, carry more chronic conditions and take more medications, and families have had reason to ask whether trial results transfer to them.
