Shingles vaccine may lower risk of stroke and heart failure

Getting vaccinated against shingles could significantly reduce your risk of cardiovascular problems. A study of more than 72,000 people suggests that those who have received the latest shingles vaccine are less likely to develop conditions like stroke or heart failure than individuals who got an older version of the jab. This may be because the latest vaccine contains a chemical that boosts the immune response and may reprogram immune cells to cause less inflammation.

The same vaccine has previously been linked to a significantly lower risk of dementia. “People should get their shingles vaccine not only because it stops them getting shingles, which in [and] of itself can be very unpleasant and quite dangerous, but also it potentially gives you protection against dementia and heart disease,” says John Tregoning at Imperial College London, who wasn’t involved in the study.

Shingles is an infection caused by reactivation of the varicella-zoster virus, which causes chickenpox. The condition, which causes a painful rash that can get infected, affects a third of people in the US at least once.

In 2025, a study linked being vaccinated against shingles to having a reduced risk of cardiovascular conditions, but this was based on comparing people who choose to get vaccinated with those who don’t. Vaccinated people tend to have healthier lifestyles in general, making it unclear whether shingles vaccination itself really boosts cardiovascular health, said Max Taquet at the University of Oxford during a press briefing.

To address this, Taquet and his colleagues made use of the fact that, in October 2017, the standard shingles vaccine administered in the US switched from Zostavax to Shingrix. The former contains a live, weakened version of the varicella-zoster virus, while Shingrix is made up of a protein from the virus, along with a chemical that strongly stimulates immunity, called AS01.

The team analysed the medical records of more than 72,000 people aged 60 and older, about half of whom received Zostavax between April and September 2017. Nearly all the remaining participants received Shingrix the following year.

Free newsletter

Sign up to Health Check

Sign up to newsletter

By 3.5 years after vaccination, 10.9 per cent of participants who had Zostavax had developed at least one of three conditions: heart failure, stroke or clogged arteries in the heart. This is compared with 9.6 per cent in the Shingrix group – a small but statistically significant difference.

“Even though the percentage changes are small, the absolute numbers of heart disease cases are high, so it can lead to a large actual number of people being protected,” says Tregoning.

This benefit waned over the next 3.5 years but was still higher in the Shingrix group.

This is the best evidence yet that being vaccinated against shingles reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, says Taquet. “Our study leverages a natural experiment that mitigates many of [the] biases [associated with observational research] and provides a more reliable estimate of the effect of Shingrix on cardiovascular disease,” he says.

The availability of Shingrix in the US in October 2017 coincided with eligibility for a shingles vaccine being lowered from age 60 to 50. The researchers estimate that if everyone aged 50 and older in the US received Shingrix, it could delay or prevent hundreds of thousands of cases of cardiovascular problems within a decade, said Taquet. Currently, only about a third of those eligible for the vaccine get it. The UK’s National Health Services offer it to anyone who turned 65 on or after 1 September 2023.

How Shingrix curbs cardiovascular issues is unclear, but prior research suggests that AS01 reprogrammes immune cells known as monocytes to produce fewer inflammatory molecules, called cytokines, said team member Betty Raman, also at the University of Oxford, during the press briefing. These promote the clogging of blood vessels, she said.

Your body clock has seasonal rhythms and it matters for vaccines

We think of our body clock ticking over on a 24-hour cycle, but evidence is growing that it has seasonal rhythms, which could affect our response to vaccines

Shingrix also prevents shingles more effectively than Zostavax, which may further lower the risk of cardiovascular problems, says Tregoning. “If you have a viral infection, you’ll then get inflammation in your body, and that will then put stress on your other organs, including the heart,” he says.

In an ongoing trial, more than 160,000 people aged 65 and older in Denmark will receive either Shingrix or no shingles vaccine. This should provide even stronger evidence for a causal link between Shingrix and a lower risk of both cardiovascular outcomes and dementia, said Taquet.

Initial results are expected in 2027. If positive, offering Shingrix as a booster vaccine every few years could significantly improve cardiovascular health and lower healthcare costs, he said.