Decline of RSV-specific antibodies during the COVID-19 pandemic

Lifting these measures resulted in out-of-season RSV activity, sometimes exceeding the incidence of hospitalisations observed in regular seasons.1–3 Declining immunity due to reduced exposure to the virus may contribute to this altered epidemiology.1,4,5 Bardsley and colleagues1 showed that the combination of laboratory, clinical, and syndromic data capture the impact of RSV activity, yet did not provide insight into the proposed decline in immunity. The repeated-measures general linear model (SPSS version 28; IBM, Armonk, NY, USA) was used to compare antibody concentrations between sampling timepoints of the same subjects and between age groups. p values, adjusted to Bonferroni and Benjamini-Hochberg procedures, are reported for timepoints and age-group differences respectively. [...]monitoring changes in antibody concentrations could identify populations susceptible to RSV infection.