Test Vaccine Helps Stop Shingles

Experimental Vaccine Helps Prevent Shingles, A Painful Skin Rash

(CBS/AP)  An experimental vaccine has shown promise at preventing shingles, a painful skin rash that afflicts 1 million Americans every year and causes long-term excruciating nerve pain for some.

In a large study of older people, researchers reported that the vaccine cut the risk of shingles flare-ups in half and reduced their severity.

Shingles can attack anyone who has had chickenpox. The virus can lie dormant in the body and resurface as shingles years later. Talk show host David Letterman was off the air for five weeks when he had a case of shingles two years ago.

"A lot of people say, 'This is the worst pain I've ever had in my life,"' said Dr. Michael N. Oxman of the San Diego VA Healthcare System, who led the study of the experimental vaccine made by Merck & Co.

One study participant, 96-year old Robert Williams, is a retired doctor who told CBS News Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Kaledin he knows the pain shingles can cause.

"I knew the severity of the disease when the pain lasts a long time," Dr. Williams said. "Anything I could do to help modify this course I would be very willing to help with."

If the vaccine is approved by the federal government, it could eventually be added to the shots recommended for older Americans. Unlike traditional vaccines, which prevent a new disease, the shingles shot would keep a long-ago acquired infection in check.

The research reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine was headed by the Veterans Affairs Department along with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Merck, which helped fund the study.

To test the vaccine, researchers recruited 38,546 people who were 60 or older and had had chickenpox. That feat turned out harder than expected.

"It turns out that most people thought shingles was something you had on your roof," said Oxman. "We ended up doing a lot more work than we planned."

Volunteers got the vaccine or a dummy shot and were followed for about three years. The vaccine cut the number of shingles cases by 51 percent, the research showed. There were 642 shingles cases in the group that didn't get the vaccine, and only 315 in the vaccinated group.

The vaccine also reduced pain and discomfort by 61 percent and reduced long-term excruciating nerve pain, a serious complication, by two-thirds. Side effects were mild and included headaches and redness or swelling at the injection site.

"Unless you've experienced it, you just can't imagine something itching that bad," said Norman Telleson, one of the study volunteers who developed a mild case of shingles.