Study shows shingles prevention just a shot away

The pain caused by shingles is difficult to treat, so why not prevent the disease, researchers reasoned. A vaccine could be marketed next year.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. June 20, 2005.

Washington -- With the conclusion of the Shingles Prevention Study, a 22-site clinical investigation of the effectiveness of a shingles vaccine, came a lot of encouraging and even amazing findings regarding this persistent, puzzling and often painful condition that tends to strike older adults.

But what some of the researchers found most exciting was that the single-shot vaccination seemed to get at the pain.

"It happily reduced the occurrence of postherpetic neuralgia, measured more than 90 days after the beginning of shingles, by two-thirds," said Michael Oxman, MD, national chair of the study and a staff physician at the VA San Diego Healthcare System.

The vaccine also reduced the number of shingles cases by 51% and minimized by 61% the severity of the disease in those who got it despite being vaccinated, Dr. Oxman said. Plus, no serious side effects were reported. The study was published in the June 2 New England Journal of Medicine.

Each year, 600,000 to 1 million Americans are diagnosed with shingles, or herpes zoster. Since about half of those who contract the disease are older than 60, those numbers are expected to rise as the nation's population ages.

Anyone who has had chickenpox could develop shingles. The major risk factors are increasing age and declining immunity. It can take a very mild form, with just a few of its characteristic blisters, or it can be very painful from the start.

"One poor soul had shingles on her chest and ended up getting a cardiac cath because she was thought to have cardiac disease," said Carol Kauffman, MD, chief of infectious diseases at the VA Healthcare System in Ann Arbor, Mich., and an investigator in the trial. But once the typical skin symptoms surfaced, the proper diagnosis was made.