New vaccine Shingrix can make the severity of illness less severe: Study

The vaccine Shingrix prevents shingles, and if people do contract the virus, it reduces the severity of illness, two company-funded study suggests.
 
Shingles, also known as herpes zoster, typically develops in older adults who had chicken pox, or the varicella-zoster virus, when they were younger. Its hallmark is a painful rash, which clears up within a month in most cases. In some instances, however, it leads to nerve pain that can linger for much longer and make it harder for people to manage daily tasks.
 
“We knew that patients who had not received the shingles vaccine, and then suffered a shingles outbreak as well as the pain related to it, would have had their quality of life negatively impacted,” said Erin Adams, a researcher at the Bernard J Dunn School of Pharmacy at Shenandoah University in Fairfax, Virginia.