Zoster vaccine
any vaccine to prevent shingles
A zoster vaccine is a vaccine that reduces the incidence of herpes zoster (a.k.a. shingles), a disease caused by reactivation of the varicella zoster virus, which is also responsible for chickenpox. Shingles provokes a painful rash with blisters and can be followed by chronic pain (postherpetic neuralgia) and other complications. Older people are more often affected, as are people with weakened immune systems (immunosuppression). Both shingles and postherpetic neuralgia can be prevented by vaccination.
Two zoster vaccines have been approved for use in people over 50 years old. Shingrix (GSK) is a recombinant subunit vaccine that has been used in many countries since 2017. Zostavax (Merck), in use since 2006, is an attenuated vaccine which consists of a larger-than-normal dose of varicella vaccine. Unlike Shingrix, Zostavax is not suitable for people with immunosuppression or diseases that affect the immune system. Zostavax was discontinued in the United States in November 2020.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Zoster vaccine” as any vaccine to prevent shingles. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8074572. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2017, 2006 and 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “Zoster vaccine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.