Shingles Vaccine Now Recommend for Those 60 and Older

Recently there was a new study conducted to further the understanding of how the Singles virus really affects senior citizens. This research was conducted by Barbara Yawn MD in Rochester, Minnesota at Olmstead Medical Center along with her team of researchers. This latest study looked into exactly how shingles affects senior citizens and they got the information they needed.

In 2006, a new vaccine came out to prevent shingles for the nation's senior citizens, but many doctors were reluctant to offer it to patients because they did not understand how much singles did affect the elderly.

In the study, the group from Olmstead Medical Center learned of serious health complications involving senior citizens affected with the singles virus. They are now recommending that the senior citizen population get the shingles vaccination so that they do not get this painful disease.

While shingles is not a fatal disease, it can still produce a painful rash on the patients. Sometimes this rash is just in one area, but other times it affects the whole body. An outbreak of shingles often begins as a rash but may also begin as a patch of blisters on the patient.

Dr. Yawn's team of researchers found that 1 in 278 senior citizens over the age of 60 on average were affected with this painful disease. For adults 50-59 the percentage drops to 1 in 24 who gets shingles in a given year. On quick glance, you can see how much more the adults aged 50-59 get shingles that is a huge difference over those adult who are 60 years old or older.

The researchers also found out that the older you are when you have a shingles outbreak the harder it will hit a patient. In some patients, a shingles out break will last about a week, but for some senior citizens the effects of shingles can last for weeks if not years after the rash has disappeared. An average an 80-year-old patient experienced pain from shingles for at least 90 days and most of that time the rash was not present.

It once was believed that shingles only affected those people with weaken immune systems, but this research has showed the researchers that all adults can get this, no matter the condition of their immune system. More then 92 percent of those patients who contracted shingles during the study had healthy immune systems.

The most common complicated that was found in this research was that the skin where the rash was located would still be very sensitive even years after the disease. It is recommended that all senior citizens get this vaccine to prevent this painful disease.

source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/91663.php