Beyfortus: false start of a new treatment for bronchiolitis

It was heralded as a first and a “major breakthrough,” according to the health minister. Beyfortus, the very first preventive treatment against RSV, the virus that causes bronchiolitis, arrived in France on September 15, 2023, with a double promise: to be quickly available to all children under 6 months of age and to protect them throughout the treatment period. season of bronchiolitis.

Two months later, this preventative treatment, based on a single injection of antibodies available in two forms: 50 mg and 100 mg, has yet to make the long-awaited revolution. And yet the French rushed to do it!

“Mixed results” and “uncertainties”

The government, which had ordered 200,000 doses before the end of winter, was quickly forced to reserve them only for maternity wards and received 50,000 additional doses: 30,000 for maternity wards and 20,000 to cover backlogs from September in pharmacies.

“We will contact pharmacists again to obtain confirmation of the number of doses they were unable to deliver in order to distribute them to them in early December,” says a Sanofi spokesperson.

Not very accessible, is the treatment at least effective? We’ll have to wait until mid-December for the first “real” results to be published. They are eagerly awaited because while the effectiveness of treating infections in general has been clear in clinical trials, the effectiveness of treating severe forms and, therefore, hospitalization of babies has been more uncertain.

The Higher Health Authority (HAS), the body responsible for evaluating new treatments, said there were “multiple results that reflect uncertainty around this criterion of great clinical interest.”