Vaccine developers seek to help group hit hardest by Covid-19: the elderly
- Pharmaceutical companies working on vaccine candidates have included older adults in large phase three trials
- The immune system ages just like the rest of the body and this can affect vaccine safety or efficiency in older adults, immunologist says
According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention the risk of getting severely ill from Covid-19 increases as people get older. In the United States, eight out of 10 Covid-19-related deaths have been people aged 65 or above, it said.
Less data has been collected on older adults in early trials of vaccines, which typically focus on healthy individuals. There are existing vaccines, like for flu or shingles, that can be less effective as people get older, due to a weakening of the immune system.
However, some positive data for older adults has been reported for an experimental vaccine by US company Moderna Therapeutics.
Phase one results published on Tuesday in The New England Journal of Medicine show that the mRNA vaccine triggered an immune response in a small group of older people that is comparable to one seen in younger adults. The vaccine is currently in phase three, or final, trials.