Shingles vaccine worth considering to avoid painful condition

It’s flu shot time — and if you haven’t gotten yours, what are you waiting for? — but today’s question involves another vaccination you might consider, too.

It’s a shingles vaccination and can be obtained at many of the same neighborhood pharmacies that already offer flu shots (and, of course, at your doctor’s office or clinic).

Shingles is caused by a virus called varicella zoster. It’s the same virus that causes chicken pox, and having had chicken pox as a child makes it possible that, as an adult, you’ll have shingles.

“Most people get chicken pox when they’re children,” says Cheryl Maes, a board-certified family nurse practitioner and lecturer in the University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Nursing. The problem, Maes says, is that even after that childhood bout of chicken pox clears up, the virus that causes it stays in the body, inactive, for years.

The virus can reactivate as shingles, a condition that can be extremely painful, Maes says, causing symptoms that can include shooting, burning or tingling pains and lesions that often are visible on one side of the body.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people age 60 and older receive the shingles vaccine.

Although the injected flu vaccine is made from an inactivated virus, the shingles vaccine is a live vaccine. People who are pregnant or who have conditions that could compromise their immune systems — such as HIV or cancer patients who are receiving chemotherapy — aren’t recommended to receive the vaccine, Maes notes.

But here’s the thing: If shingles is so nasty, what about people a bit younger than 60? Is it worth it for people in their 50s to fudge their age to get it?

Actually, Maes says, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the shingles vaccine for use in people 50 and older, even if the CDC does not have a routine recommendation for using it in adults 50 to 60.

That may come one day, and among the questions that still need answering are how long protection from a shingles vaccination lasts and whether a booster would be necessary if the vaccine were to be given to 50-somethings. But, for now, Maes suspects that most pharmacies and medical providers will hew to the CDC’s 60-and-older recommendation.

Still, it’s a possibility 59-and-unders might want to discuss with their doctors. And, in the meantime, don’t delay if you suspect that you do have shingles.

Because shingles is caused by a virus, antibiotics won’t work. But, Maes says, there are antivirals their medical provider can prescribe, and the sooner those medications can be administered, the better the outcome.