Older adults who took the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine Arexvy at the same time as the adjuvanted seasonal quadrivalent flu shot had an adequate immune response and tolerated it safely, a new trial showed.
Shady Kotb, PhD, of GSK in Wavre, Belgium, and colleagues reported their findings on Monday in Clinical Infectious Diseases. The team tested the vaccines together in 1,045 participants. Of them, 523 people took the shots at the same time and the rest got the two shots one month apart.
These vaccines can be given together in older adults “without clinically relevant interference with the immune responses to either vaccine and with a clinically acceptable safety and reactogenicity profile,” the authors wrote. “Given the seasonal overlap of these two infections, the ability to give both vaccines during a single doctor’s visit may improve convenience and increase uptake of both vaccines, ultimately reducing the high burden of both influenza and RSV disease among older adults.”
In an accompanying editorial, Angela Branche, MD, an associate professor at the University of Rochester in New York, noted that 29.1% of people over 65 had received an RSV vaccine as of May 4 this year while 50% got a flu shot in the 2023–2024 year as of Feb. 24 this year.
“There are many possible reasons why uptake of the RSV vaccine for older adults has been slow in its first season. These may include low awareness of RSV as an important cause of lower respiratory tract infection in adults on the part of both patients’ and providers’ vaccine fatigue in the wake of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and vaccine access,” Branche wrote. “However, equally as likely is uncertainty around the safety and effectiveness of RSV vaccines and what groups might most benefit from its use.”
Branche said she has questions about side effects from co-administration even though she’s an “RSV vaccine enthusiast.”
Giant cell arteritis, a serious adverse event impacting the large blood vessels, occurred in one person in the group who took the shots a month apart. Six fatal serious adverse events in that group occurred but researchers said they weren’t vaccine related, according to an article in MedPage Today. The US Centers for Disease Control reported that taking the flu shot and RSV vaccine together along with COVID-19 vaccines is safe.
