Günter Waxenecker from the medical market supervision agency for health and food safety (AGES) reported this at a press conference on Wednesday. The first two RSV vaccines in particular were advertised for many people at risk. There was no noticeable effect on the population in the winter, said doctor Arshang Valipour.
“For the first time, two vaccines have been approved to prevent RSV in adults aged 60 and over,” said Waxenecker at the joint media event with the Forum of the Research-Based Pharmaceutical Industry in Austria (FOPI). One of the vaccines against the respiratory syncytial virus may also be administered to pregnant women in order to provide “nesting protection” for the infant after birth. Small children, like older people, belong to the main risk group.
Drug approved to prevent RSV
RSV can just be a cold, but ten percent of infected children get an infection of the lower respiratory tract, explained Angela Zacharasiewicz, head of the Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at the Ottakring Clinic in Vienna. RSV is “one of the diseases that also causes a lot of suffering,” flooding hospitals in the winter months and putting a strain on pediatricians’ practices. There are also children who repeatedly become seriously ill after an RSV infection due to other viral effects and have to be hospitalized again, reported Zacharasiewicz. In addition to vaccinating the expectant mother, a new drug to prevent RSV has also been approved. The pediatrician hoped that this so-called monoclonal antibody would make sense for all newborns and that it would be available next winter.
“The new RSV vaccinations offer 90 to 95 percent protection against serious respiratory infections in older people with comorbidities,” emphasized Valipour. These people would then not have to go to the hospital. There were relatively many RSV infections last winter. However, this could have something to do with the fact that testing was carried out more often, said the director of the Karl Landsteiner Institute for Lung Research. An effect of the vaccination could therefore not be seen. However, you currently have to pay for the RSV vaccine yourself. Valipour explained that he is “cautiously confident” that risk groups will at least receive a refund of the purchase price in the future.
Five new drugs for rare diseases in children
Waxenecker noted that, among other things, the approval of five new drugs against rare diseases in children was encouraging. These include remedies for rare metabolic diseases. For oncologic drugs, for example, there were new approvals for bone marrow and lymph gland cancer. Another new active ingredient makes it possible to treat a common form of severe heart failure, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The first gene therapy to treat severe hemophilia A in 2022 was followed last year by gene therapy for the second most common form of the bleeding disorder, hemophilia B.
The number of 36 drug innovations in 2023 was around the average of the past ten years, where a total of 402 drugs with a new active ingredient were approved. The European pharmaceutical industry invests more than 42 billion euros in this research every year, explained FOPI President Julia Guizani. With a research and development ratio of 12.4 percent of sales, the European pharmaceutical industry is by far the most research-intensive industry of all technology sectors – well ahead of the IT and automotive industries. 25 pharmaceutical companies in Austria are represented in the forum of the research-based pharmaceutical industry.
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