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Vaccination

Shingles vaccine cut zoster by about half

Langan SM, Smeeth L, Margolis DJ, et al. · PLoS medicine · 2013

Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC

In older US adults, herpes zoster vaccination showed ~48% effectiveness against incident zoster and ~59–62% against post-herpetic neuralgia.

Key findings

Overall VE ~48% against incident zoster; 62% against PHN at 30 days and 59% at 90 days; uptake was only 3.9% and lower in Black and low-income groups.

Methodology

A cohort of 766,330 eligible older Medicare beneficiaries was followed for zoster vaccination and incident herpes zoster/PHN, estimating adjusted vaccine effectiveness.

Limitations

Randomized efficacy in this dataset, or precise VE in highly immunosuppressed subgroups (small numbers).

How this study connects

Role on claims

Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.

  • SupportsVaccinationconcept

    Overall VE ~48% against incident zoster; 62% against PHN at 30 days and 59% at 90 days; uptake was only 3.9% and lower in Black and low-income groups.

    Evidence for the claim as stated.

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