-
Americas
-
Asia & Oceania
-
A-I
J-Z
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more -
Middle East & Africa
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more
Regions
-
Americas
-
Asia & Oceania
-
Europe
-
Middle East & Africa
-
Americas
-
Asia & Oceania
-
Europe
Europe
- Adriatic
- Belgium
- Bulgaria
- Czech Republic
- Deutschland
- España
- France
- Greece
- Hungary
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italia
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more -
Middle East & Africa
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more
SOLUTIONS
-
Research & Development
-
Real World Evidence
-
Commercialization
-
Safety & Regulatory Compliance
-
Technologies
LIFE SCIENCE SEGMENTS
HEALTHCARE SEGMENTS
- Information Partner Services
- Financial Institutions
- Public Health and Government
- Patient Associations
- Payers
- Providers
THERAPEUTIC AREAS
- Cardiovascular
- Cell and Gene Therapy
- Central Nervous System
- GI & Hepatology
- Infectious Diseases and Vaccines
- Oncology
- Pediatrics
- Rare Diseases
- View All
Impacting People's Lives
"We strive to help improve outcomes and create a healthier, more sustainable world for people everywhere.
LEARN MORE
Harness the power to transform clinical development
Reimagine clinical development by intelligently connecting data, technology, and analytics to optimize your trials. The result? Faster decision making and reduced risk so you can deliver life-changing therapies faster.
Research & Development OverviewResearch & Development Quick Links
Real World Evidence. Real Confidence. Real Results.
Generate and disseminate evidence that answers crucial clinical, regulatory and commercial questions, enabling you to drive smarter decisions and meet your stakeholder needs with confidence.
REAL WORLD EVIDENCE OVERVIEWReal World Evidence Quick Links
See markets more clearly. Opportunities more often.
Elevate commercial models with precision and speed using AI-driven analytics and technology that illuminate hidden insights in data.
COMMERCIALIZATION OVERVIEWCommercialization Quick Links
Service driven. Tech-enabled. Integrated compliance.
Orchestrate your success across the complete compliance lifecycle with best-in-class services and solutions for safety, regulatory, quality and medical information.
COMPLIANCE OVERVIEWSafety & Regulatory Compliance Quick Links
Intelligence that transforms life sciences end-to-end.
When your destination is a healthier world, making intelligent connections between data, technology, and services is your roadmap.
TECHNOLOGIES OVERVIEWTechnology Quick Links
CLINICAL PRODUCTS
COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS
COMPLIANCE, SAFETY, REG PRODUCTS
BLOGS, WHITE PAPERS & CASE STUDIES
Explore our library of insights, thought leadership, and the latest topics & trends in healthcare.
DISCOVER INSIGHTSTHE IQVIA INSTITUTE
An in-depth exploration of the global healthcare ecosystem with timely research, insightful analysis, and scientific expertise.
SEE LATEST REPORTS
FEATURED INNOVATIONS
-
IQVIA Connected Intelligence™
-
IQVIA Healthcare-grade AI™
-
Human Data Science Cloud
-
IQVIA Innovation Hub
-
Decentralized Trials
-
Patient Experience powered by Apple
WHO WE ARE
- Our Story
- Our Impact
- Commitment to Public Health
- Code of Conduct
- Environmental Social Governance
- Privacy
- Executive Team
NEWS & RESOURCES
Unlock your potential to drive healthcare forward
By making intelligent connections between your needs, our capabilities, and the healthcare ecosystem, we can help you be more agile, accelerate results, and improve patient outcomes.
LEARN MORE
IQVIA AI is Healthcare-grade AI
Building on a rich history of developing AI for healthcare, IQVIA AI connects the right data, technology, and expertise to address the unique needs of healthcare. It's what we call Healthcare-grade AI.
LEARN MORE
Your healthcare data deserves more than just a cloud.
The IQVIA Human Data Science Cloud is our unique capability designed to enable healthcare-grade analytics, tools, and data management solutions to deliver fit-for-purpose global data at scale.
LEARN MORE
Innovations make an impact when bold ideas meet powerful partnerships
The IQVIA Innovation Hub connects start-ups with the extensive IQVIA network of assets, resources, clients, and partners. Together, we can help lead the future of healthcare with the extensive IQVIA network of assets, resources, clients, and partners.
LEARN MORE
Proven, faster DCT solutions
IQVIA Decentralized Trials deliver purpose-built clinical services and technologies that engage the right patients wherever they are. Our hybrid and fully virtual solutions have been used more than any others.
LEARN MORE
IQVIA Patient Experience Solutions powered by Apple
Empowering patients to personalize their healthcare and connecting them to caregivers has the potential to change the care delivery paradigm. IQVIA and Apple are collaborating to bring this exciting future of personalized care directly to devices patients already have and use.
LEARN MOREWORKING AT IQVIA
Our mission is to accelerate innovation for a healthier world. Together, we can solve customer challenges and improve patient lives.
LEARN MORELIFE AT IQVIA
Careers, culture and everything in between. Find out what’s going on right here, right now.
LEARN MORE
WE’RE HIRING
"Improving human health requires brave thinkers who are willing to explore new ideas and build on successes. Unleash your potential with us.
SEARCH JOBSBlog
RSV and the elderly: Why this disease known for attacking infants is equally risky for older adults.
Nov 02, 2018
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a highly contagious respiratory disease responsible for more than 30 million acute infections in children every year and 160,000 deaths—mostly in low and middle-income countries. As a result, it is most often discussed in terms of infant care. However, data shows elderly adults are also particularly vulnerable to RSV, making the need for a vaccine that much more urgent.
The realization that RSV is widespread in older adults is relatively new. For decades, the virus, which manifests with cold-like symptoms, was often mistaken for the flu.
However, the development of influenza treatments, and the need to verify the presence of influenza over other viruses is helping physicians more accurately categorize their patients’ illnesses. It’s also providing greater clarity about the need for an RSV vaccine.
While many times patients’ symptoms are the result of a random virus, the diagnostics show a surprisingly high prevalence of RSV. Among healthy adults, RSV symptoms are usually relatively mild, but in older adults, and those with underlying heart or lung conditions, the infection can be deadly. Each year, roughly 177,000 older adults are hospitalized, and 14,000 of them die in the United States alone due to an RSV infection.
Because the virus is so contagious, it can spread rapidly in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, putting whole communities at risk.
Tricky to pin down
The good news is that the ability to accurately diagnose RSV and the growing body of data showing RSV infection trends among older people has spurred increased investment in RSV treatments and vaccines suitable for these patients. There are up to 60 vaccines currently in development with 16 candidates in clinical development.
The bad news is that despite years of research, none of these vaccine candidates have made it to market. The slow rate of progress is due to a number of challenges. In the 1960s, an RSV vaccine was produced that actually increased the rate of illness and caused two deaths, making some people in the healthcare community skittish about new developments in this area.
This virus is also difficult to work with. Developers have struggled to select the right pathway for these vaccines, and because the protective antibodies are not well understood, developers have less data to support a move from phase 2 to phase 3 studies. Animal models of efficacy have also been less consistently predictive for human subjects, adding additional levels of uncertainty – and cost -- to the development process.
Identifying patients with RSV has also been challenging for these trials. Healthy adults with RSV may never see their doctors, which means they aren’t easily identified for trial participation. However the use of population healthcare data and analytics tools may make it easier to find physicians treating these patients in the future, and to track infection trends as a way to speed recruiting.
Despite all of these obstacles, the commercial demand for an RSV vaccine – and the lack of any current vaccines or treatments -- is incentive enough for developers to push on in search of a solution. To date, none are close to commercialization, but several large pharma and smaller biotech companies are currently running RSV vaccine projects targeting both children and older adults.
Research underway
VBI Vaccines has begun work on an RSV vaccine candidate using its enveloped virus-like particle (“eVLP”) platform. The project is funded in part by Canada’s National Research Council-Industrial Research Assistance Program.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), launched a clinical trial in 2018 of an investigational vaccine designed to protect against RSV in adults. The Phase 1 study at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center will enroll a small group of healthy adult volunteers to examine the safety of an experimental intranasal vaccine and its ability to induce an immune response.
Biotech companies Arsanis and Adimab, are partnering to develop an RSV treatment using monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) with support from the Gates Foundation.
In May, 2018, Pfizer launched a Phase 1/2 trial of its RSV vaccine candidate in healthy adult volunteers. The randomized, placebo-controlled, observer-blind, dose-ranging study will include two age groups enrolled in parallel to support both maternal and older adult indications.
Despite the slow progress I’m optimistic that a vaccine will be ready for approval in the coming years. In the meantime, raising awareness about RSV risks, reducing inappropriate use of antibiotics to treat viruses, and encouraging testing to verify the disease will all help bolster awareness of the need for this research, and accelerate new solutions to market.
Read more about our team’s perspective on RSV in infants, and the promise of maternal immunization in making headway here. And to see how Q2 solutions is driving innovation in RSV, click here.