Could COVID Increase Your Risk for Shingles?

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, April 11, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Catching COVID-19 seems to extend an older particular person’s threat of creating a case of shingles.

Researchers discovered that individuals 50 and older who had a COVID an infection had been 15% extra prone to develop shingles, in comparison with individuals who had been by no means contaminated. That threat climbed to 21% in folks hospitalized with a extreme case of COVID.

“It is necessary that well being care professionals and folks 50-plus are conscious of this potential elevated threat so sufferers may be recognized and handled early in the event that they develop shingles following COVID-19,” stated lead researcher Dr. Amit Bhavsar, director of scientific analysis and growth for the pharmaceutical firm GSK in Brussels.

Shingles is a painful pores and skin rash that happens in individuals who’ve beforehand had hen pox.

The virus that causes hen pox, varicella zoster, hides in folks’s nerve cells after they’ve gotten over their preliminary case of the infectious illness, defined Dr. Carrie Kovarik, a professor of dermatology and drugs with the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.

In some instances, varicella zoster will reemerge later in life and trigger shingles, normally resulting from a faltering immune system.

“Your T-cells are what preserve the hen pox virus contained,” Kovarik stated. “When your T-cells aren’t doing the job — you’d had an sickness otherwise you get burdened otherwise you get outdated — the hen pox virus can come out down the nerve and onto your pores and skin. It cannot maintain onto it any longer.”

Because of this, it is smart that COVID may immediate shingles, for the reason that virus wreaks such havoc on the immune system, Kovarik stated.

“I’ve positively seen sufferers who had one or two episodes of [shingles] in a yr who’d by no means had it earlier than however who had had COVID,” Kovarik stated. “And I had a number of sufferers like this, and it was occurring in additional of my sufferers.”

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, agreed.

“This shouldn’t be a stunning discovering as SARS-CoV-2 is thought to trigger immune dysfunction and physiologic stress,” Adalja stated. “Physiologic stress and dysregulated immune perform are identified components” in shingles outbreaks.

Nearly all adults over age 50 have had hen pox, and due to this fact are in danger for creating shingles, Bhavsar stated.

For this research, Bhavsar and his colleagues in contrast medical knowledge from practically 400,000 COVID sufferers 50 and older with greater than 1.5 million individuals who by no means contracted COVID.

No one in both group had been vaccinated towards both COVID or shingles.

The researchers discovered an elevated threat of shingles amongst COVID sufferers that persists for a minimum of six months after their sickness.

Because folks vaccinated towards shingles had been excluded from the research, it is not identified whether or not the shingles vaccine may restrict or get rid of this threat from COVID, Bhavsar famous.

Kovarik is worried {that a} extreme COVID an infection would possibly overcome the immunity conferred by the shingles vaccine, significantly in folks with weakened immune methods.

“The shingles vaccine is only a stronger dose of the hen pox vaccine, making an attempt to rev up your immune cells and present them the virus so you’ll be able to have some immune exercise towards that virus,” Kovarik stated. “People who’ve some immune issues, possibly they are not mounting nearly as good of an immune response to the vaccine, or the COVID is so sturdy it may well overwhelm your immune response to the shingles.”

Folks who’re nervous about getting shingles ought to think about getting each the COVID and shingles vaccines, Kovarik stated.

“The numbers have proven that the COVID vaccine helps stop hospitalizations and deaths, so getting a COVID vaccine ought to stop a extreme case, which might hopefully stop [shingles] in these sufferers,” Kovarik stated.

The new research was printed lately within the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases .

More info

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has extra about shingles.

SOURCES: Amit Bhavsar, MBBS, MHA, director, scientific analysis and growth, GSK, Brussels, Belgium; Carrie Kovarik, MD, professor, dermatology and drugs, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia; Amesh Adalja, MD, senior scholar, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Baltimore; Open Forum Infectious Diseases, March 9, 2022