Can You Get Shingles After Being Vaccinated For Chickenpox

Varicella zoster vaccines are approved for children age 12 months and older to prevent chickenpox and for adults age 50 and older to prevent shingles but the formulations are different and the vaccines are not interchangeable.

Can you get shingles after being vaccinated for chickenpox.

It can reactivate years later and cause shingles. While you can get chickenpox by touching or breathing in the virus particles that come from chickenpox blisters you can also likely get chickenpox through tiny droplets from infected people that get into the air after they breathe or talk the droplet spread doesn t happen with shingles though. Chickenpox and shingles are related because they are caused by the same virus varicella zoster virus. If a vaccinated person gets the disease they can still spread it to others.

However for a few people it is possible to get chickenpox more. That s why you should get the shingles vaccine at age 50 or older if your immune system is strong even if you ve already had. If you had zostavax in the recent past you should wait at least eight weeks before getting shingrix. You can still get shingles after being vaccinated just like with the flu but if you do the vaccine usually decreases the severity of the illness dr.

For most people getting chickenpox once provides immunity for life. Although it s rare you can get shingles more than once. It s not really surprising that you got shingles after being vaccinated. Although chickenpox vaccines do contain a weakened version of the live virus which can reactivate later in life and cause shingles this is very rare he said.

Nearly 99 percent of children who. And the rate of shingles dropped in the entire group vaccinated and. It takes about 2 weeks from 10 to 21 days after exposure to a person with chickenpox or shingles for someone to develop chickenpox. What the researchers found was that kids who were vaccinated against chickenpox had a 78 lower risk of developing shingles.