What to expect when you get the shingles vaccine

[KatrinR872250]

Hi everyone,

This health site Ask a Patient might be of use for people about to get or thinking about getting the new 2-dose shingles vaccine called Shingrix, as it has more than 400 comments from patients who have received the vaccine. (a disclosure, I work on this site but thought this information could be of use to people in this forum.) Many of the folks at the site's forum have commented about not being informed about how severe the side effects would (or could) be, while others said they were fully informed and got the shot on a Friday so that they would have a couple days of down time to recover. Often, the reaction is more severe with the second dose. However, many of them said the discomfort is worth it not to get shingles in the future. Check out these patient experiences (442 in all), sortable by age, gender and rating score:

https://www.askapatient.com/viewrating.asp?drug=581490&name=SHINGRIX+VACCINE

Another interesting thing I learned when researching this is that children today may not be completely protected from getting shingles in the future, even if they get the chickenpox vaccine. Check out this article in the Atlantic: "Why Do We Need Separate Chicken-Pox and Shingles Vaccines? " It does say that
"Kids who got chicken-pox vaccines are less likely to later get shingles than kids who naturally caught chicken pox"

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/10/shingles-chickenpox-virus/543816/

Hope this is helpful .