ArticleOpen forum infectious diseases2022
Increased Risk of Herpes Zoster in Adults ≥50 Years Old Diagnosed With COVID-19 in the United States.
Article in Open forum infectious diseases, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 59 citations in OpenAlex.
- Varicella zoster virus infection.Nature reviews. Disease primers · 2026Review
- Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Outpatient Visit-Based Frequency Trends of Herpes Zoster Ophthalmicus.Cureus · 2026Article
- Varicella zoster virus infection and reactivation in a psychiatric ward during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case series analysis.Clinical and experimental vaccine research · 2026Article
- Age-specific Risk of Herpes Zoster in Immunocompetent Adults ≥18 Years-of-age-A Retrospective Cohort Study in the United States.Open forum infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Herpes zoster burden in a private healthcare setting of Argentina.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Post-COVID varicella-zoster virus reactivation: lowering the immunological threshold for latency breakdown.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2026Review
- Varicella-zoster Virus Reactivation with Severe Pneumonia Following Convalescence from Coronavirus Disease: A Case Report and Literature Review.Internal medicine (Tokyo, Japan) · 2025Review
- Herpes Zoster: Risk Factors for Occurrence, Complications, and Recurrence with a Focus on Immunocompromised Patients.Diseases (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- No Genetic Causal Relationship between COVID-19 and Herpes Zoster: A Bidirectional Mendelian Randomization Analysis.Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare · 2025Article
- Single-cell immune profiling and validation of PBMCs in the onset of and recovery from herpes zoster.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Increase in Adult Patients with Varicella Zoster Virus-Related Central Nervous System Infections, Japan.Emerging infectious diseases · 2024Article
- Herpes Zoster Ophthalmicus: Presentation, Complications, Treatment, and Prevention.Infectious diseases and therapy · 2024Review
- The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Incidence of Herpes Zoster: A Narrative Literature Review.Infectious diseases and therapy · 2024Review
- Cutaneous manifestations associated with COVID-19 infection at a university hospital in eastern China.American journal of clinical and experimental immunology · 2024Article
- No Causal Effect of COVID-19 on Varicella-Zoster Infection, Herpes Zoster Progression, and Postherpetic Neuralgia: A Two-Sample Mendelian Randomization Study.Clinical, cosmetic and investigational dermatology · 2024Article
- Review
- Ramsay Hunt Syndrome in Asymptomatic COVID-19 Infection: A Case Report and a Literature Review.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- Can Nitazoxanide and/or other anti-viral medications be a solution to long COVID? Case report with a brief literature review.Clinical case reports · 2023Article
- SARS-CoV-2 Induced Herpes Virus Reactivations and Related Implications in Oncohematology: When Lymphocytopenia Sets in and Immunosurveillance Drops Out.Microorganisms · 2023Article
- Hospitalization burden related to herpes zoster infection during the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain (2020-2021).Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Case reports have described herpes zoster (HZ) in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, this constitutes low-quality evidence for an association. We therefore performed a retrospective cohort study to assess the risk of developing HZ following a COVID-19 diagnosis. Methods: We compared the HZ incidence in ≥50-year-olds diagnosed with COVID-19 vs those never diagnosed with COVID-19. We used data from the US MarketScan Commercial Claims and Encounters and Medicare Supplemental (3/2020-2/2021) and Optum Clinformatics Data Mart (3-12/2020) databases. Individuals with COVID-19 were exact-matched 1:4 to those without COVID-19 by age, sex, presence of HZ risk factors, and health care cost level. Adjusted incidence rate ratios (aIRRs) were estimated by Poisson regression. Results: A total of 394 677 individuals ≥50 years old with COVID-19 were matched with 1 577 346 individuals without COVID-19. Mean follow-up time after COVID-19 diagnosis and baseline characteristics were balanced between cohorts. Individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 had a 15% higher HZ risk than those without COVID-19 (aIRR, 1.15; 95% CI, 1.07-1.24; Conclusions: We found that COVID-19 diagnosis in ≥50-year-olds was associated with a significantly increased risk of developing HZ, highlighting the relevance of maintaining HZ vaccination.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.