RSV Prevention Is Changing
Every winter, RSV shows up in our offices the same way: worried parents, struggling infants, and packed schedules. For years, our prevention options were limited. That’s now changing — and quickly.
A new study published in The New England Journal of Medicine looked at clesrovimab, a long-acting antibody designed to help protect infants from RSV during their first season of exposure. We want to share what this study showed, how it fits with what’s already available, and why this matters for independent practices — without hype and without taking sides.
👉 Read the full NEJM article here:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa2502984
What the Study Looked At
The trial followed more than 3,600 healthy preterm and full-term infants from around the world. Each infant received one injection before or during their first RSV season — either clesrovimab or placebo — and researchers tracked RSV illness and hospitalizations over the following months.
This is the same real-world question pediatricians care about every fall:
Does this actually keep babies out of the hospital during RSV season?
What They Found
The results were encouraging:
Fewer infants needed medical visits for RSV
Hospitalizations due to RSV were significantly reduced
Protection lasted through most of a typical RSV season
Side effects were generally mild and similar to placebo
Importantly, infants who received clesrovimab did not have worse RSV illness the following season — a question many clinicians understandably ask with newer prevention tools.
How This Fits with What We’re Already Using
Clesrovimab joins a growing group of RSV prevention options, including maternal RSV vaccination and nirsevimab (Beyfortus), which many practices already know well.
While these products share the same goal — preventing severe RSV — they are not identical. They differ in how they target the virus, how dosing is structured, and how clinical trials measured outcomes. Because of that, it’s not appropriate to compare them head-to-head based on published studies alone.
What is fair to say is this:
Multiple effective RSV prevention tools now exist, and that’s a meaningful shift from where we were just a few years ago.
Why This Matters for Independent Practices
From our perspective, this isn’t just about another product entering the market. It’s about choice.
More options can mean:
Better alignment with family preferences
More flexibility during supply shortages
Simpler workflows for some practices
Greater leverage when guidelines, pricing, and access are being decided
At the same time, new options bring real questions — about coverage, cost, storage, timing, and how recommendations will ultimately shake out. Those questions matter most to independent practices that live at the intersection of clinical care and operational reality every day.
The Bigger Picture
RSV prevention is clearly moving forward. That’s good for infants, families, and clinicians. The challenge — and opportunity — is making sure these advances translate into real access, sustainable practice models, and physician-led decision-making, not confusion or one-size-fits-all mandates.
At Trusted Doctors Alliance, our role isn’t to promote one solution over another. It’s to help practices understand the data, stay grounded in evidence, and have a seat at the table as policies, contracts, and recommendations evolve.