BACKGROUND: Each year, 3–7% of older adults in the United States (US) experience respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection. The objective of this study was to estimate the annual burden of RSV among US older adults.
METHODS: A Markov model was developed to estimate the annual clinical and economic burden of symptomatic RSV among adults aged ≥60 years in the US (n=81,001,651). RSV epidemiology, health care resource use and cost inputs (2022 US dollars) were obtained from published literature and standard US sources. A unit costing approach was used to estimate RSV direct medical costs and the model included both market and nonmarket productivity losses of RSV cases.
RESULTS: In the base-case analysis, the model estimates 3,031,750 symptomatic RSV cases annually among adults aged ≥60 years, including 1,094,349 medically-attended cases (Figure 1). Of the 1,276,526 lower respiratory tract infections, 171,415 are hospitalized and 13,919 result in death. The annual economic burden of RSV is estimated at nearly $2.8 billion in direct costs and almost $4.7 billion in indirect costs, for a total of over $7.4 billion from the societal perspective. Although 60–64-year-olds have lower hospitalization and mortality rates vs. ≥65-year-olds, they still experience considerable RSV-related burden (e.g., 802,602 annual symptomatic RSV cases resulting in over $1.1 billion in productivity losses). RSV burden remained high across sensitivity analyses.
CONCLUSIONS: RSV has a high burden in US adults aged ≥60 years. Additional analyses are needed to estimate the impact of RSV vaccination on reducing the disease burden.
