Impact of RSV on Vulnerable Adults: Understanding the Risks for Those With Respiratory Disorders
More Programs and Publications Featuring Dr. Rodney Rohde
In this program:
Respiratory syncytial virus can have a stronger impact on those with certain risk factors, but what are they? Medical laboratory scientist Dr. Rodney Rohde discusses age and health factors that increase risk of RSV complications, the incidence rate of RSV, types of complications that can occur, and advice for higher risk patients.
Transcript
Interviewer:
Dr. Rohde, for RSV when it comes to adults, how does RSV affect adults with comorbidities such as COPD or emphysema or other respiratory disorders for that matter?
Dr. Rodney Rohde:
RSV affects children under 2, they're really a high risk category, but it can be serious in adults who are really 60 and older and maybe younger if they're immunocompromised in many different ways, different chronic condition. So RSV can absolutely be life-threatening for adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. We all call that COPD, things like asthma and other types of lung diseases, even those who have maybe survived lung cancer and they have diminished lung capacity and things like that. So RSV, what it does is it can come in and cause further damage to the lungs, especially the lower parts of the lung, that's what most of the research shows. And that can lead to all sorts of complications. That can include things like just the headache of more inflammation and swelling which causes higher mucus production gets narrower, more difficult to breathe.
You can have scarring which worsens asthma even long after the infection. For COPD symptoms to worsen, you can get just this overall inflammatory effect and that damage to lungs can cause all sorts of breathing difficulties, wheezing that leads to more hospitalization opportunities, maybe chances to get pneumonia, and then all of that. All of that, we just know it can lead to advanced lung disease, which typically people are gonna end up in the hospital with that.
Interviewer:
And what do you think increases the risk of RSV contraction for adults?
Dr. Rodney Rohde:
Yeah, so really, adults are at the highest risk of severe RSV have factors like one is age, so anybody 60 years or older with these types of conditions can raise those risks. So lung disease like we've talked about, COPD and asthma, heart disease, so heart failure, coronary artery disease can cause some of that increased risk. Diabetes, there's diabetes again, and even interestingly, some neurological diseases have been linked to this a little bit. Kidney, we've mentioned kidney with other areas, liver disease, blood disorders, and similar types of conditions. I'm sure cancer is in there as well. If you start breaking it down, then if you look at the CDC kind of prevalence and statistics around adult RSV, we see about 60,000 to 120,000 older adults hospitalized every year. It's kind of a range there and anywhere between six and 10,000 die, 10,000 deaths up to each year from RSV infections.
It's critically important to have an accurate and as real time and early medical laboratory diagnostic tests to differentiate between COVID, RSV, and influenza, and even others. Those are the kind of the big three we worry about in respiratory season. But as well as I do, you could be looking at parainfluenza or other bacterial types of infections that cause pneumonia. And so all of those are really, really critical to just know what's happening because then you can target the appropriate therapy. We all know that you don't need antibiotics for viral illnesses, so you may need specific monoclonal therapy, or you may need to get vaccinated going forward. They are found quite easily at the CDC website or discussing with your physician.
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