Infection with COVID-19, according to researchers, may increase the risk of developing shingles in older people, according to Daily MedNews.

Researchers found that people aged 50 and older who had a COVID infection were 15% more likely to develop shingles than people who had never been infected.. This risk has increased to 21% in people hospitalized with severe COVID disease.. The new study was published recently in the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases..

“It is important that healthcare professionals and people over 50 are aware of this potential increased risk so that patients can be diagnosed and treated early if they develop shingles after COVID-19,” said lead researcher Dr. Amit Bhavsar, director.

Shingles is a painful skin rash that occurs in people who have previously had chickenpox.. The virus that causes varicella, varicella, hides in people's nerve cells after they've overcome their first case of an infectious disease. In some cases, chickenpox reappears later in life and causes shingles, usually due to a weakened immune system..

“Your T cells hold the varicella-zoster virus,” Kovarik said.. – When your T-cells don’t do their job – you get sick, or you’re stressed, or you get old – the varicella-zoster virus can travel down a nerve and onto your skin. He can no longer hold on to her.”.

These data show that COVID can cause shingles because the SARS-CoV-2 virus causes immune dysfunction and physiological stress, wreaking havoc on the immune system.. Physiological stress and dysregulation of immune function are known factors” in shingles outbreaks.

“I have definitely seen patients who had one or two episodes of shingles a year who had never had it before but who had COVID. And I've had a few of those patients, and it's happened to a lot of my patients,"

Nearly all adults over the age of 50 have had chickenpox and are therefore at risk of developing shingles, according to researchers..

In this study, Bhavsar and colleagues compared the medical records of nearly 400,000 COVID patients aged 50 and over with more than 1.5 million people who never contracted COVID.. None of the groups were vaccinated against either COVID or shingles.

Research results.

Researchers have found an increased risk of shingles among COVID patients that persists for at least six months after their illness. Since people vaccinated against herpes zoster were excluded from the study, it is not known if the shingles vaccine can limit or eliminate this risk from COVID, Bhavsar noted..

Kovarik is concerned that severe COVID infection could overcome the immunity provided by the shingles vaccine, especially in people with weakened immune systems.

The shingles vaccine is just a stronger dose of the varicella vaccine that tries to activate the immune cells and show them the virus so that the person has some immune activity against that virus.. People who have some kind of immune problem may not develop an immune response to the vaccine as well, or COVID is strong enough to suppress your immune response to shingles.

People who are worried about getting shingles should consider getting COVID and shingles vaccines, Kovarik said..

“The numbers have shown that the COVID vaccine helps prevent hospitalizations and deaths, so getting the COVID vaccine should prevent a severe case that will hopefully prevent shingles in these patients,” Kovarik said..

The new study was published recently in the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases..

medical-heal. en.