Mystery solved? How shingles can increase stroke risk

I got the older shingles vaccine, will be getting the better newer one at my next doctor visit.

Mystery solved? How shingles can increase stroke risk

• A new study solves a long-standing riddle: Why does getting shingles increase the risk of stroke?
• Tiny exosomes appear to be the mechanism behind the connection. They contain proteins involved in clotting and the activation of platelets, which, in turn can result in strokes.
• A person’s increased risk of stroke can last up to 1 year after the shingles has resolved.
• Shingles — and the increased risk of stroke — can be easily prevented among people older than 50 with shingles vaccinations.

When a person recovers from chickenpox, typically in childhood, the virus that causes it, varicella zosterTrusted Source (VZV), remains in the body.

For one in threeTrusted Source people, the virus reactivates later in life as shinglesTrusted Source. The other name for shingles is herpes zosterTrusted Source, as VZV is a type of herpesvirusTrusted Source.

Shingles may appear as a rash or blisters on one side of the face, or most commonly, as an extended band around the left or right side of the body — “zoster” comes from the Greek word for “girdle.”

While some experience mild itching or tingling from shingles, for others, the pain can be excruciating. Worse, experts have believed for some time that after the acute infection subsides, there is an increased risk of stroke, but it has been unclear why.

A new study identifies the mechanism linking shingles and stroke: prothrombotic and proinflammatory exosomes.

“That’s exciting for me as a stroke doctor because we’ve known about this association for a very long time. Actually being able to have a potential mechanism is really cool,” Dr. Jason Tarpley told Medical News Today.

Dr. Tarpley is a stroke neurologist and director of the Stroke and Neurovascular Center for the Pacific Neuroscience Institute at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA. He was not involved in the study.

‘An exciting novel idea’

“Implicating exosomes is really kind of an exciting novel idea,” said Dr. Tarpley, adding that “[t]his is actually pretty simply dealt with by vaccination.”

The study, he said, “gives people an opportunity to draw attention to the fact that shingles, or herpes zoster, increases your stroke risk, and it is preventable.”

Previous studiesTrusted Source have shown that an increased risk of stroke lasts for up to 1 year after shingles symptoms that typically last a few weeks. The current study shows how that increased risk occurs.

The study’s corresponding author is assistant professor Dr. Andrew Bubak at the Anschutz Medical Campus of the University of Colorado Denver.

“We now have to start thinking about infectious diseases a bit differently — once infection has resolved, disease is not over. Persistent exosomes may continue to trigger pathologies thought to be unrelated to, and distant from, the site of the original infection,” Dr. Bubak told MNT.

The study appears in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.