Potential Shingles Vaccine

Shingles is a very painful disease that you can get after having the chicken pox. It is more common in adults over the age of sixty but there have been some cases in young adults also. The disease is caused because after you have chicken pox, you (normally) are immune from getting again, but some viruses can hide in your body, and they can cause Shingles. The virus travels down the nerve and breaks out on the skin. These break-outs can be very itchy or cause tingling, burning, or shooting pains. They then turn into fluid filled blisters that normally appear on one side of the body.

The Department of Veterans Affairs are now doing a five-year study of shingles vaccines. They are testing on generally healthy adults over the age of sixty and have recruited over 1,000 people so far. Half the people are being injected with something similar to the chicken pox vaccine for children, the other half are being injected with placebo. Researchers are hoping to find a prevention soon.

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