BEIJING, Oct. 27 (Xinhuanet) — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Thursday that anyone over the age of 60 should be vaccinated with the FDA approved Zostavax vaccine for shingles. Shingles is a viral disease caused by the reactivated chicken pox virus.
Zostavax, approved last May, was shown to reduce the incidence of shingles by 50 percent and to reduce the pain in those that did get the disease.
“The virus that causes chickenpox stays in your body throughout life for reasons we don’t really understand,” said Dr. Rafael Harpaz of the CDC. “It reactivates and comes to your skin down one particular nerve to the surface of your skin where it will cause a rash and pain on one side of your body in one area.”
“I’ve heard stories of vibrant 62-year-old tennis-playing persons that end up being house-bound and suicidal because of severe pain and not being able to interact socially and so forth,” he added. “It can last for months and sometimes even years. It can be really life shattering.”
Shingles lesions are blistery and extremely painful. They can travel to the face, and into the eyes — where they can impair vision and even cause blindness. Shingles is most likely to occur in later years, when the immune system has declined.
The recommendation that the vaccinations begin at age 60 is based on the evidence that the disease is most common among older people, whose immune system has weakened.
“The are over a million shingles cases every year in the United States, with the average person having a 30 percent chance of developing the condition in their lifetime,” said Mark Feinberg, a senior executive for Merck & Co., Inc.’s vaccine division.
Merck, a pharmaceutical company that makes the vaccine, said the drug costs about 150 U.S. dollars and this recommendation will encourage doctors to use it and insurers to provide coverage for it. Key insurers in this case would be Medicare and Medicaid.
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