Pulmonary

Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV)

RSV is a respiratory virus that infects the lungs and respiratory tract. Healthy people normally recover easily from an RSV infection. However, the clinical picture of the infection can be severe in more vulnerable patients such as immunocompromised patients or infants born prematurely. RSV is the most common cause of bronchiolitis (inflammation of the small airways in the lung) and pneumonia in children under one year of age, and is increasingly recognised as an important cause of respiratory illness in the elderly.

RSV is the primary cause of infant hospitalisation, and a leading cause of virus-associated deaths in infants. There are more than 300,000 infant hospitalisations in the seven major pharmaceutical markets (USA, Japan, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain) and the reported infection rate is 70-80% in children under two years old. The mortality rate for hospitalised patients is less than 1% in healthy children but 3.5% in those with high risk conditions.
Treatment is mostly symptomatic and there is a high need for an effective specific anti-RSV drug.

Ablynx is developing ALX-0171 for the treatment of RSV.

Patient resources

Patients may find useful information about their disease on the internet. Please find below some links to patient resources for lung and respiratory diseases: