Samsung Medical Center (SMC) said on Monday that its researchers have published a study showing shingles vaccination to patients before kidney transplantation can effectively prevent the occurrence of shingles after transplantation.

This is the first time that the herpes zoster vaccine before transplantation has proven effective in patients who have undergone kidney transplantation, said the researchers.

Shingles commonly occur in immunocompromised patients, such as kidney transplant recipients, and not only cause severe pain and skin lesions, but also side effects that reduce the quality of life for a long time, such as postherpetic neuralgia.

The newly introduced recombinant zoster vaccine is favored over the zoster vaccine live (ZVL) but the ZVL is recommended to kidney transplant patients to prevent shingles up to four weeks before organ transplantation. Despite triggering an adequate immune response, live vaccines have not proven effective against shingles.

From January 2014 to December 2019, the research team analyzed the preventive effect of pre-transplant vaccination on a total of 424 kidney transplant patients, including 84 patients who received the live herpes zoster vaccine before transplantation.

Consequently, the researchers found that the incidence of shingles in the five-year pre-transplanted patients was 9.16 cases per 1,000 people, compared to 30.36 cases per 1,000 people who were not vaccinated before the transplant.

In other words, the incidence of shingles was 3.31 times lower in the pre-transplanted patients.

Even after adjusting for other influencing factors like the type of immunosuppression during transplantation, the cause of chronic kidney failure, and rejection of transplant organs, the risk ratio of shingles in the inoculation group was also low at 0.18.

This result supports the current guidelines for recommending herpes zoster vaccination before transplantation in patients receiving kidney transplants.

"Vaccination is an effective preventive method for shingles, which is common in people who have received organ transplants, and requires active attention from doctors,” said the research team. “We hope those who are planning or have received a transplant will trust objective data on the effectiveness of vaccination and actively participate in inoculation.”