Daily Dose: Social Risk Factors for RSV Hospitalization in Older Adults

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Patient Care brings primary care clinicians a lot of medical news every day—it’s easy to miss an important study. The Daily Dose provides a concise summary of one of the website's leading stories you may not have seen.

Last week, we reported on findings from an abstract presented at IDWeek 2023, held October 11-15 in Boston, MA.

The study

Investigators sought to evaluate the social determinants of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)-related hospitalizations in older adults. They enrolled patients aged 50 years and older admitted with acute respiratory infection (ARI) or an exacerbation of congestive heart failure (CHF) or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) to 2 Emory University hospitals between October 2018 and March 2020.

Participants provided medical and social history and additional details were retrieved from their medical charts. Standard-of-care specimens in addition to nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs were obtained and analyzed via multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test.

Findings

A total of 1429 patients were enrolled and 78 (5.5%) of them tested positive for RSV. When investigators compared this group to those who tested negative for RSV they found the infected group were more likely to be women (66.7% vs 55.3%, P=.05), to be immunocompromised (43.6% vs 31.5%, P=.03) and particularly with HIV/AIDS (11.5% vs 3.5%, P=.003). Patients infected with RSV also had more commonly traveled more than 100miles during the 2 weeks before hospitalization (12.8% vs. 6.7%, P=.04).

Analysis of baseline health status or other comorbidities found no significant differences between the groups.

Authors' comment

"Among ARI hospitalizations, RSV prevalence was higher for female sex, immunocompromised status, and those that travelled within the preceding two weeks. Understanding risk factors for severe RSV hospitalization may inform prevention recommendations."

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