COVID-19 anti-body testing in Cologne, Germany. PHOTO/Wikimedia Commons.
By SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
New research shows the shingles vaccine can lower your risk of stroke and heart attack; in addition to preventing the total agony of a blistering rash.
Shingles is an infection nobody wants. Those who have endured the blistering rash describe the pain as searing, burning, or stabbing; sometimes lingering for months without relief. In severe cases, the viral disease can even turn deadly.
Now, first-of-its-kind evidence suggests the vaccine that protects against shingles may do more than prevent agony. Data pooled from 19 studies and presented in Madrid at the world’s largest cardiology conference found that the shot could also lower your risk of stroke by 16 percent and your risk of heart attack by 18 percent.
Charles Williams, lead author of the study and the global associate medical director at the pharmaceutical company GSK, calls the findings “encouraging,” while also cautioning that “more research is needed” to separate causality from correlation.
But the potential impacts are most striking: someone suffers a heart attack every 40 seconds in the United States, and strokes are responsible for one in 20 deaths.
According to National Geographic, other scientists view the findings as yet another reason to increase awareness and uptake of a critical and routine shot that fewer than one in five adults receive as recommended.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone 50 and older get two doses of the vaccine—marketed as Shingrix—as well as immunocompromised adults as young as 19.
When taken as directed, Shingrix is more than 90 percent effective at preventing shingles—and this new research broadens its potential benefits, says William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, who was not involved in the study. He adds that the findings may “hopefully help persuade more patients to get vaccinated.”
Scientists are still unraveling the biology behind why the shingles vaccine may protect against cardiovascular disease. For now, the link appears to be tied to the downstream harms of the varicella-zoster virus (VZV) that causes shingles—the same virus responsible for childhood chickenpox.
“After recovery from chickenpox, VZV in the skin rash is not eliminated by the immune system but remains in a dormant state in nerve cells,” explains Albert Shaw, a professor of infectious diseases at Yale School of Medicine.
As immunity wanes with age or illness, the virus can resurface as shingles—an extremely painful rash that typically follows a line of nerves on one side of the body.
But shingles doesn’t just cause rash and discomfort, adds Shaw. It can also harm your liver and lungs, trigger fever, chills, headache, fatigue, and, in 10 to 15 percent of cases, cause nerve pain that lasts months. Shingles can also affect the eye and inner ear, potentially causing “permanent vision or hearing loss,” notes Yale dermatologist Jeffrey Cohen.
Beyond these direct harms, the virus is also linked to higher rates of heart attack and stroke, says Emily Rayens, an epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente, who has recently published demonstrative research.
Two key mechanisms help explain the connection. One involves the systemic inflammation that occurs when a far-reaching infection like VZV damages nerves and weakens the circulatory system, explains Fawziah Lalji, an infectious disease researcher at the University of British Columbia.
That inflammation can also injure the delicate inner lining of blood vessels—a process known as endothelial injury. Damaged vessels are more prone to clotting and blockage, Schaffner explains, which can trigger heart attacks and stroke.
