Shingles Risk Higher In Patients Who Had Childhood Asthma

Asthma rates may be going down, but a new study reveals that for those still affected by asthma as children, they are at an increased risk of shingles. The findings are published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (JACI).

"Asthma represents one of the five most burdensome chronic diseases in the U.S., affecting up to 17 percent of the population," said lead author Young Juhn, M.D., who is a general academic pediatrician and asthma epidemiologist at the Mayo Clinic Children's Research Center, in a news release. "The effect of asthma on the risk of infection or immune dysfunction might very well go beyond the airways."

During the study, researchers reviewed medical records for potential patients with shingles in Olmsted County, Minnesota; this included 371 cases with shingles who were an average age of 67. Meanwhile, researchers compared them against 742 control subjects.

Findings revealed that 23 percent of the sample--or 87 individuals--had asthma, when compared to 15 percent (114 of 742) from the control group. Furthermore, the study authors found that adults with asthma were at about a 70 percent greater risk of developing shingles, compared to those without asthma.

While researchers are uncertain at the time why this is occurring, they believe that it may have something to do with how asthma helps suppress adaptive immunity and increases the risk of varicella zoster virus reactivation.

"As asthma is an unrecognized risk factor for zoster in adults, consideration should be given to immunizing adults aged 50 years and older with asthma or atopic dermatitis as a target group for zoster vaccination," Juhn concluded.

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