The shingles vaccine is up to 97% effective in preventing the condition caused by the herpes zoster virus, which inflames nerves and causes painful rashes. Now, a new metastudy says it may also be a big help in boosting cardiovascular health.
In reaching this conclusion, the metastudy – which was carried out by Charles Williams, from the biopharma research company, GSK – looked at 19 different previous studies examining health metrics and the vaccine. He found that the shingles vaccine was associated with a 16% reduction in the risk of cardiac events, including stroke and heart attack in adults over the age of 50, and an 18% reduction in risk for adults between the age of 18 and 50.
The findings will be reported Saturday, August 30 at the 2025 European Society of Cardiology Congress in Madrid.
The shingles vaccine has previously shown health benefits beyond guarding against the disease. A study from April of this year, for example, showed that the vaccine was linked to a 20% reduction in dementia risk. And a different observational study from May indicated that those who receive the Zostavax shingles vaccine had a 26% lower risk of death from heart disease.
Conversely, shingles itself has previously been linked to cardiovascular-related incidents. In one study, it was found that the disease triggered the development of sac-like molecules carrying blood-clotting proteins that increased stroke risk. Another study showed that adults who had the disease had up to a 30% higher risk of experiencing a cardiovascular event in the years following.
So the fact that a vaccine against the condition shows a relationship to improved cardiovascular health certainly makes sense, and falls in line with previous research. That being said, even the researcher himself cautions about a few soft spots in his analysis, and calls for more in-depth studies.
“While our findings are encouraging, there are some limitations to the available data that we studied,” concluded Williams. “Almost all the evidence came from observational studies, which are prone to bias and shouldn’t be used to infer causality. All the studies used in the meta-analysis aimed primarily to investigate the use of herpes zoster vaccine to prevent shingles in the general population, which may limit the ability to generalise this research to people with a higher risk of cardiovascular events. This demonstrates the need for more research in this area.”
Source: European Society of Cardiology
