ArticleFrontiers in medicine2026
Safety profile of herpes zoster vaccines in the United States: a descriptive and disproportionality analysis of adverse events reported to the vaccine adverse event reporting system (VAERS), 2017-2024.
Article in Frontiers in medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Herpes zoster causes substantial morbidity in older adults, and US herpes zoster vaccination shifted from the live-attenuated Zostavax to the recombinant Shingrix after 2017 We describe the post-marketing adverse-event profile of these vaccines reported to the US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and identify events reported disproportionately for herpes zoster vaccines. Methods: In a descriptive cross-sectional design, we analyzed 69,822 US VAERS reports listing a herpes zoster vaccine, received 1 January 2017-25 April 2024. Reports were characterized by demographics, brand, MedDRA preferred terms and system organ classes, and US FDA serious-event indicators; brand subgroups were summarized descriptively. Reporting odds ratios (RORs) with 95% confidence intervals compared the combined herpes zoster vaccine cohort with all other US VAERS reports. Reporting followed the STROBE guideline. Results: Shingrix accounted for 58,813 (84.2%) reports and Zostavax for 10,507 (15.0%). Reports were predominantly in women (63.9%) and adults aged 50-69 years (median age 64.0 years). Reactogenic and injection-site terms predominated-pyrexia (18.3%), pain (17.8%), chills (15.9%), headache (15.4%), and injection-site pain (14.2%). Against all other US reports, injection-site and influenza-like reactions were modestly enriched (e.g., injection-site pain ROR 2.92), whereas vesicular rash was strongly over-reported (ROR 43.70); the latter was concentrated in live-vaccine reports and reflects reported vaccine-strain disease rather than an unexpected adverse reaction. Serious reports comprised 6.6% of the cohort (2.9% Shingrix, 27.6% Zostavax). Conclusion: Eight years of VAERS data are consistent with the recognized reactogenicity of the recombinant vaccine and the live-vaccine profile of Zostavax; most reported events were transient and non-serious. These hypothesis-generating disproportionality signals require confirmation in active surveillance with denominator data.
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.