I just read an article on Science-Based Medicine that contains some good news for sufferers of shingles, also known as herpes zoster (not to be confused with good ole’ herpes, the STD). Zostafax is a vaccine that was made to fight shingles, which in case you weren’t aware, is like leftovers from the chicken pox. Once you get chicken pox, some of it can live in your cells for years and THEN trigger an extremely unpleasant variation of chicken pox.

I’ve known people who had shingles, and it looks like a great big bag of suck. As I understand it, it is more a threat as we age, and despite being massively uncomfortable, is not generally considered life-threatening. However, who wants to come down with a vaccine-preventable disease described as a great big bag of suck?

The Zostavax vaccine has been around for a few years, licensed by the FDA in May of 2006. Prior to that, they’d gone through a lot of testing (as all vaccines do, despite what the nutbars will tell you) and it looked fairly safe, but the folks at Veterans Affairs (remember, this is a disease that makes life crappier for older people) have done a much more thorough after-the-fact evaluation and have found that the incidents of harsh reactions to the vaccine were identical to the incidents of harsh reactions in the placebo-controlled group. In other words, it looks like yet another safe vaccine.

The vaccine is recommended for anyone over 60, so if you’re an old-timer, consider getting this one.

Jim