Shingles outbreaks can increase the risk of heart disease by a third, a study has found.
- It is estimated that around one in two people worldwide, aged 85, have had at least one episode of shingles.
- In France, the shingles vaccine can be offered to people over 50, whether they have already had chickenpox or not.
Shingles has long-term implications for heart health. This is the conclusion of a team of researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Their study of the complications caused by this painful condition, resembling a rash that can occur anywhere on the body or head, was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
The zona corresponds to reactivation of the varicella virus
Shingles is caused by virus varicella zoster, a chickenpox infection in childhood. The virus may stay”sleeping” in some lymph nodes nervous but under the effect of age, fatigue, illness or for no apparent reason, it can reactivate in the form of shingles.
To carry out their work, the researchers followed 200,000 men and women from three large cohort studies. None of the participants had a history of stroke or coronary heart disease. The observation spanned a period of up to 16 years, to determine if any of them were at higher risk of suffering a stroke or developing heart disease after a shingles flare-up. .
Shingles Infection Causes Significant Cardiovascular Risk
Their results show that people who had previously had shingles had a 30% higher long-term risk of suffering a major cardiovascular event than people who had not had shingles. This risk lasted 12 years or more.
Indeed, the shingles virus was detected in “lsmall and large blood vessels, which can lead to chronic changes in the vascular system and inflammation that can increase the risk of blocked blood vessels and restricted blood flow”, explain the authors.
The researchers point out that a major limitation of their work is that much of it was done before the shingles vaccine was widely available. “We are currently collecting information on vaccination among our participants and hope to conduct these studies in the future.says study author Sharon Curhan, a physician and epidemiologist in the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
