Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have shown that people 60 years or older with weakened immunity — primarily organ transplant recipients who take immunosuppressive medications to reduce the risk of rejection and others with immune system disorders — do not respond as strongly to vaccines against the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) as people in the same age group with normal immune function.
The study, conducted by a research team at the Johns Hopkins Transplant Research Center, was published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). It parallels earlier work done at the center to better understand how the immune systems of people who are immunocompromised respond to vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
RSV is a contagious pathogen that causes infections of the respiratory tract. It is most commonly seen in infants and young children, but poses a threat to all age groups and may lead to more serious respiratory illnesses, such as pneumonia, in the elderly and those who are immunocompromised.
"We found that on average, older adults who are immunocompromised developed fewer antibodies against RSV following vaccination as compared with the very strong responses for healthy people over age 60 seen in the clinical trials used to validate the vaccines," says study lead author Andrew Karaba, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Additionally, antibody levels in people who are immunocompromised were highly variable, with some study participants showing strong increases in immunity because of the vaccines while others barely responded."
