Herpes Zoster & Inflammation Outcomes

Overview:

A first infection with the varicella zoster virus manifests as chickenpox, after which the virus remains “hibernated” in nerve cells in the body and can break out occasionally to cause shingles. The virus has recently been implicated in a variety of health outcomes related to inflammation of blood vessels. Understanding whether this virus really is involved in the causal pathway that leads to such health outcomes could be very useful to our understanding of these diseases, and ultimately how to treat and prevent them. In addition, because there is an effective vaccine to reduce the chance of getting shingles, it is important to find out if the vaccine can prevent some of these adverse health outcomes. If so, promoting uptake of the vaccine, and potentially providing it already at younger ages or as additional “booster shots”, could be an effective way of preventing these adverse health outcomes.

We hope to take advantage of the way in which the shingles vaccine was rolled out in Australia to help us control for the fact that usually those who get vaccinated are different in various health-related characteristics compared to those who do not get vaccinated. The Patron data is well suited to answering this question because it records most vaccines that were administered (unlike the Australian Immunization Register, which is – to our understanding – unreliable for years prior to 2021), as well as patients’ diagnoses and health outcomes.

Using our unique approach, we will be able to contribute to the research evidence on the varicella zoster virus in a new and important way because we will be able to provide estimates of the shingles vaccine’s effects that are much less vulnerable to bias than most other existing studies.