Shingles Vaccine Shingvax May Protect Seniors Longer

GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) experimental vaccine Shingvax displayed a 90 percent ability to prevent the Shingles condition in seniors four years after receiving an injection.

Additionally, GSK believes Shingrix has shown greater protection for older recipients than what has been demonstrated by Merck's rival shingles vaccine, Zostavax.

"It's a real step forward for vaccinology for elderly patients," said the study's lead author, Dr. Anthony Cunningham, of the Westmead Institute for Medical Research in Australia.

Vaccination is an attractive option to reduce the disease burden due to herpes zoster, and its complications in older adults.

Currently, a live attenuated herpes zoster vaccine (Zostavax) is approved for use in adults 50 years of age or older and is recommended for adults 60 years of age or older.

Shingles is a viral infection that causes a painful rash, and is caused by the varicella-zoster virus, which is similar to chickenpox. Although shingles can occur anywhere on your body, it most often appears as a single stripe of blisters that wraps around either the left or the right side of your torso.

The latest four-year data on Shingrix, which appears in the New England Journal of Medicine, shows it may also provide an additional significant advantage by maintaining its effectiveness over time.

A Kaiser Permanente study found Zostavax was 69 percent effective in patients age 60 and older, yet only 4.2 percent remained protected seven years later.

"Although the follow-up period was limited to four years, there was little decline in effectiveness in the years following vaccination," said Dr. Susan Rehm, vice chairwoman of the department of infectious disease at the Cleveland Clinic, who was not involved in the study.

GSK had previously reported 90 percent protection with Shingrix in recipients over age 69. It also protected against residual pain caused by shingles in 89 percent of cases.

The risk of shingles, which is caused by reactivation of the chickenpox virus, increases with age. There are about 1 million cases of shingles in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Nearly 80 percent of those who received Shingrix had a reaction to the shot, such as arm soreness, including 12 percent whose reaction was serious enough to prevent normal activity. That compared with rates of 30 percent and 2 percent for those who received a placebo.

The GSK vaccine was administered in two doses given two months apart, while Merck's is given in one injection.

GSK said the Shingvax vaccine could reach the market in 2017.

Support for this study was from GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals. Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org. A complete list of investigators in the Zoster Efficacy Study in Adults 70 Years of Age or Older (ZOE-70) Study Group is provided in the Supplementary Appendix, available at NEJM.org.

The CDC price list for Zostavax is $196.91.