(WGHP) -- Physicians say they need more people to roll up their sleeves for an RSV vaccine trial.
Clinical research company Accellacare is running two trials for respiratory syncytial virus; locally, physicians are recruiting for the Janssen vaccine.
A spokesperson said they are less than halfway to recruiting a minimum of 250 participants.
In total, the goal for the vaccine study is about 30,000 people over 60 years old around the world.
Physicians say the trial is a two and a half to three-year commitment, and they hope a successful trial could help save thousands of lives.
“It is the leading cause of respiratory illness in adults. It's something that it's very much like the common cold in healthy adults. But if you've got somebody who's really sick it can be devastating,” physician Paul Wakefield said.
Wakefield and Rickey Manning, of Accellacare, explained there’s no real treatment for RSV. The CDC warned about an early surge in cases over the summer, which can hit older adults and children hard.
“The trials in the past happened to come on years that there was not very much RSV. You can't show a great decrease in the number of cases if you don't have quite a few cases,” Manning said. “Since we already have an early severe RSV season we think it'll be a good time to get a vaccine to try to show clearly that it makes a difference.”
Both physicians agreed the recruitment response hasn’t been as strong as it was for the COVID-19 vaccine.
“COVID is in the news, and so it's really easy to, to get to people to participate for that, but RSV's really not in the news, even though it's really been around a long time, it causes a lot of damage, but without that knowledge that they have of, yeah, this is something that's killing people,” Wakefield said.
They hope more people will sign on for the injection, four scheduled visits to the study center and two video or phone calls needed.
“We know our vaccine technology now is so much superior to what it used to be in these studies that you know, I think people need to understand that this, these studies are very safe and vaccines are very safe and that it's just helping the community as a whole, if you come out and participate in these studies and it really is for the good of everybody,” Wakefield said.
If you’re interested in participating and 60 years old or older, call (336) 347-4361 or send an email to patientmatch@accellacare.com.
0 Comments