You Can Prevent Two Miserable Diseases With One Shot!
"Well, you don't want to get shingles!"
"I never said I 'wanted' shingles, I'm just dreading the shingles shots."
Having heard about the after-effects, I put it off until I'd had a Covid vaccine (or 2?). That was like a dress rehearsal for the shingles vaccine. The vaccine reaction was a minor trade-off, considering the benefit.
What is shingles?
Shingles is the reactivation of the chicken pox virus, herpes zoster. It stays dormant in your nerves after you've had chicken pox.
It's an excruciatingly painful rash that can lead to stroke, spinal cord inflammation, and brain inflammation. If you get it in your eyes, it can cause blindness. The pain can last for months to years.
If you've had chicken pox and live to be 85, your lifetime risk of shingles is 50%. The risk increases with age. Much like chicken pox, the older you are, the more severe the outbreak.
It's like the villain that strikes when your guard is down. People who are in ill health are particularly vulnerable. My grandmother got it when she was sick with cancer.
Oh, and you can get it more than once.....
The vaccine is recommended for people 50 and older and those 19 and older with a suppressed immune system.
Shingles can be much worse for people with a weakened immune system.
Because the vaccine (Shingrix) is made from a protein produced in a lab, not the virus, there's no chance of getting chicken pox or shingles from the vaccine. That makes it safe for immunocompromised folks.
Shingrix may prevent something else....
Researchers in Wales found a 19.9% relative reduction in the occurrence of dementia in the vaccinated group.
“Our rigorous causal approach allows for the conclusion that herpes zoster vaccination is very likely an effective means of preventing or delaying the onset of dementia,” Eyting et al.
Herpes viruses are the prime suspect in the cause of dementia.
These viruses, primarily herpes simplex virus 1, have been found to:
cause dementia in animals.
be present with amyloid plaques in brain autopsies of patients who died from dementia.
Herpes zoster infection (chicken pox) alone didn't trigger amyloid in neurons, while HSV-1 infection did.
BUT in the presence of dormant HSV-1, herpes zoster infection caused HSV-1 reactivation, triggering more amyloid aggregation than HSV-1 infection alone.
About 70% of the world population has latent or dormant HSV-1 and herpes zoster infections.
Dementia risk is likely to be multifactorial, influenced by lifestyle choices (particularly sleep), pre-existing medical conditions, and genetics.
Some of those are out of our control but one effective preventive measure appears to be the shingles vaccine.
Even if it didn't prevent dementia, it does prevent shingles.
And you don't want to get shingles!