The Shingles Vaccine Might Protect Your Heart

A new study suggests that the shingles vaccine may provide an unexpected benefit: it could also help lower the risk of serious heart problems. Researchers found that people who received the newer shingles vaccine, Shingrix, had a lower risk of conditions such as heart attacks, strokes and heart failure compared with people who received an older shingles vaccine.

The findings were published in Nature Medicine. Scientists say the results are interesting because the shingles vaccine was developed to protect people from shingles, not heart disease. The possible heart-related benefit was an unexpected finding that could lead to more research.

Shingles is a painful illness that causes a rash and blisters. It is caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox. After a person recovers from chickenpox, the virus can remain inactive in the body and become active again years later, causing shingles.

Around one million people in the United States develop shingles each year. The illness can cause severe pain, and some people can continue to experience nerve pain even after the rash disappears.

The first shingles vaccine used a weakened form of the virus to help the immune system fight the infection. However, that vaccine was discontinued in 2017. Shingrix, the newer vaccine, works differently. It uses a small piece of a protein from the virus rather than using the whole virus.

Researchers wanted to understand whether the difference between the two vaccines could have other effects on people’s health. They compared health records from people who received the older vaccine in 2017 with records of people who received Shingrix in 2018.

The researchers followed the health information of these groups for about seven years. Their findings showed that people who received Shingrix had a lower rate of major heart-related problems.

According to the study, the Shingrix group had about 1.3% fewer cases of serious heart problems. These included heart failure, heart attacks and strokes.

When the results were compared for every 1,000 people, there were about 96 cases of heart problems among those who received Shingrix. In comparison, the older vaccine group had around 109 cases.

Scientists are still trying to understand why a vaccine designed to prevent shingles might also be linked to better heart health. One possibility is that preventing or reducing the effects of the shingles virus could have an impact on inflammation and blood vessels. However, researchers say this explanation has not yet been confirmed.

The findings have raised another important question: Could the shingles vaccine have benefits for blood vessels in other parts of the body? Scientists are interested in studying whether the vaccine could potentially reduce the risk of other conditions connected to blood vessel health.

However, experts caution that the study does not prove that Shingrix directly prevents heart disease. The research was based on health records and compared different groups of vaccinated people. Other factors could have influenced the results.

More studies will be needed to confirm the findings and understand the biological reasons behind them. Researchers may also need to conduct further investigations to determine whether the possible heart benefits are directly caused by the vaccine.

For now, the main purpose of the shingles vaccine remains preventing shingles and its complications. The possible protection against heart problems is an interesting additional finding that scientists will continue to investigate.

If future research confirms the connection, the discovery could make the shingles vaccine even more important for eligible adults. It could also provide scientists with new information about the relationship between viral infections, inflammation and heart health.