ArticleVaccines2025
Herpes Zoster in Children in the Post-Vaccination Era: Age Shift, Clinical Characteristics, and Changing Dermatomal Patterns.
Article in Vaccines, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Clinical Characteristics and Determinants of Complications in Pediatric Herpes Zoster Requiring Hospitalization.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundUniversal varicella vaccination has fundamentally altered the epidemiology of varicella-zoster virus (VZV) infections. While the incidence of primary varicella has declined, the characteristics of herpes zoster (HZ) in the post-vaccine generation remain a subject of debate. This study aimed to analyze the demographic and clinical characteristics of pediatric HZ in the context of a mature national immunization program.
methodsThis retrospective observational study included children under 18 years of age diagnosed with HZ between 2018 and 2025 at the dermatology outpatient clinic of a tertiary hospital. Demographic, clinical, and epidemiologic variables were retrieved from hospital records.
resultsA total of 64 pediatric patients (mean age: 10.5 ± 4.9 years; 59.4% male) were analyzed. The majority (93.8%) were vaccinated. Vaccinated children presented at a significantly younger age (mean: 9.1 ± 5.4 years) than those with a history of natural varicella infection without vaccination (mean: 12.3 ± 3.5 years;
conclusionsUniversal vaccination is associated with a shift in the onset of pediatric herpes zoster to younger individuals, often presenting with cervical dermatomal involvement hypothesized to be linked to vaccination injection sites. Clinicians should recognize that while HZ in vaccinated children is typically a self-limiting event that does not require an extensive immunologic workup in otherwise healthy, immunocompetent children, rare complications like postherpetic neuralgia can still occur. Limitations of this sin-gle-center, retrospective study include a high exclusion rate due to missing data, a small number of unvaccinated comparators, and the lack of viral genotyping to differentiate wild-type from vaccine-strain virus.
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.