Shingrix vaccine is now available

About one in three people in the US will develop shingles--a painful skin infection that affects people who had chicken pox as children.  ( https://www.cdc.gov/shingles/about/overview.html )  People who have had cancer or chemotherapy have a 10-50% greater chance of developing shingles.  ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5518853/ )  A new vaccine is now available that provides about 90% effectiveness over a five year period.  I got my first shot today.

Having a previous cancer diagnosis was associated with a modest, but clear increase in the odds of zoster, but there was substantial heterogeneity in the association according to type of malignancy. The largest associations were observed between haematological malignancies and subsequent odds of zoster, with lymphoma and leukaemia associated with a more than doubling in the odds of zoster in adjusted models, and myeloma associated with a 4.24-fold increase in odds. 11 out of 18 of the solid (non-haematological) cancers investigated were also positively associated with subsequent zoster risk; the largest association was with CNS cancer (adjusted OR=2.31), while oral, oesophageal, stomach, colorectal, lung, breast, ovarian, prostate, kidney, and bladder cancers were also each associated with 10–50% increases in odds of zoster. This association between cancer and zoster was larger among younger patients, and for several malignancies the association varied by time since diagnosis, typically peaking within 3 years after malignancy diagnosis. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5518853/