RSV Vaccine Shows 100% Effectiveness in COPD: Jorgen Vestbo, MD

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The results of a Danish cohort study assessing the effectiveness of the adjuvanted RSVPreF3 vaccine in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) were presented at the European Respiratory Society 2026 International Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

The estimated vaccine effectiveness was 100% against RSV-related severe COPD exacerbation, RSV-coded hospitalizations, and RSV-related mortality, with no events observed among the fewer than 6000 vaccinated individuals in the study.¹ Even so, these data should be interpreted with caution, Jorgen Vestbo, MD, a professor of respiratory medicine and an honorary consultant at the Northwest Lung Centre, Manchester University Hospital, and co-study author, said in an interview with The American Journal of Managed Care^®. When outcome estimates are based on zero observed events, he explained, that alone calls for caution regardless of how the data were collected.

Vestbo noted that a Danish health setting offers an advantage in capturing cases accurately, since infections are not registered based solely on a diagnosis code at discharge.

"I don't know if you've seen, but there's another real-world study using the Optum database in the US, and of course, that's based on claims data, and either you have a claim diagnosis of RSV or not," he explained. "In the Danish system, you can actually go in and see if they were just coded as, for instance, a COPD exacerbation."

He also said the Danish health system allows researchers to check patient microbiology databases to see whether a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for RSV came back positive or negative, giving them more confidence they are capturing more RSV infections. Still, he said, that does not remove the need for caution when the estimate is based on zero events.

Generalizability From Trial to Real-World Practice

Translating results from a controlled trial into real-world data is another area where researchers should proceed carefully, Vestbo said. While it may be reasonable to expect real-world findings to replicate a trial's results, researchers should also weigh generalizability and other external factors, such as the relatively uniform, largely Caucasian population studied in Denmark.

"When you take in all the people that I would see in my clinic, it seems as if they will get the same benefit as they would if they had been in a trial, which is nice," Vestbo said. "I don't think you can say much more than that."

References

1. Fonseca MJ, Bratkovic S, Colak Y, et al. Effectiveness of adjuvanted RSVPreF3 vaccine against severe exacerbations and mortality among patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: emerging results from a nationwide Danish cohort study. Presented at ERS 2026 International Congress; September 5-9, 2026; Barcelona, Spain.