RSV Vaccination Lowers Risk for IBD Patients Over 60, Study Finds

A large new study shows that the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccine reduces the risk of both infection and complications in older adults with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). However, it also found that fewer than 1% of these patients are currently getting the vaccine.

The study, “Respiratory Syncytial Virus Vaccine is Associated with Better Outcomes in Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients over 60 years old: A U.S. Propensity-Matched Study,” was selected as an oral presentation at the recent American College of Gastroenterology meeting in Philadelphia.

The findings support the recommendation that an annual RSV vaccination should be routine for IBD patients over age 60, explains Miguel Regueiro, MD, Chief of the Digestive Disease Institute at Cleveland Clinic, and the study’s lead author. He notes that, to date, researchers have not found any evidence that the vaccine had higher rates of side effects or caused flare-ups in IBD patients.

“This affirms that RSV is an important vaccine that our patients over the age of 60 should have, and it is underutilized,” he says. “We should be telling these patients, ‘When you get your yearly flu shot, you should also get vaccinated for RSV.”

IBD patients at higher risk of RSV

Both IBD itself and many of the medications used to treat it can increase risk from a variety of infections, making vaccinations for flu, pneumonia and COVID-19 part of routine health maintenance for this population.

Recent studies have shown that these patients have more than double the risk of RSV infection than patients without IBD, and they are also at higher risk of complications like pneumonia and hospitalization.

The FDA now recommends the RSV vaccine for all adults over 75, or adults over 60 who have additional risk factors.

Study design and findings

In the retrospective cohort study, researchers analyzed claims data from the TriNetX database and compared outcomes for IBD patients over 60 who received the vaccine with those who did not.

They found that the vaccinated group had a lower risk of RSV infection overall, as well as a lower risk of pneumonia, acute respiratory failure, hospitalization and ICU admission.

One unexpected finding was how few patients were actually getting the vaccine: only 0.2%.

“I was surprised to see how low the percentage of RSV vaccine uptake was,” Dr. Regueiro said. “I was expecting it to be low but not as low as it was.”

More research planned

Although the database provided a large sample size — researchers identified 452 patients in the vaccinated group and over 243,000 in control — it lacked additional variables such as patients’ comorbidities and current medications, and whether their IBD was active at the time of vaccination, Dr. Regueiro notes.

He hopes to continue gathering data on patients being treated at Cleveland Clinic, for future studies that will include some of those additional details.

“At Cleveland Clinic, we’re now incorporating RSV vaccination recommendations into our clinical practice for IBD, and we’re prospectively tracking those patients,” he says. “It will be useful to see what those data show and whether they confirm what we saw in this study.”