The study, of about 240,000 cancer patients in Australia from 2006 to 2015, found that any type of cancer was associated with a 40 percent increased risk of developing shingles, compared with not having cancer.
And those with a solid tumor — such as cancer in the lung, breast, prostate or other organ — had a 30 percent higher risk of shingles than people without cancer, study first author Jiahui Qian and colleagues said in a journal news release.
Qian is with the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
Shingles (herpes zoster), marked by painful rashes and skin blisters, is caused by the varicella zoster virus, the same virus that causes chickenpox. The virus remains dormant in the body, but causes shingles if it reactivates later in life.
“These findings have important implications in view of recent advances in development of zoster vaccines,” wrote Kosuke Kawai, of Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Barbara Yawn, of the University of Minnesota, in a commentary accompanying the study.
A shingles vaccine approved for U.S. use in 2017 does not use a live form of the virus and may be safe for people with weakened immune systems, including those receiving chemotherapy, the commentary authors said.
However, due to a lack of data, this vaccine is not yet recommended for use in that group of patients.
Nearly one-third of Americans people in the United States will develop shingles, and about 1 million cases occur in the country each year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.
— Robert Preidt
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SOURCE: Journal of Infectious Diseases, news release