Herpes zoster reactivation - a.k.a. shingles - following COVID-19 vaccination in six patients with comorbid autoimmune/inflammatory diseases may be a new adverse event associated with the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine, suggested a new report.
At two centers in Israel, there have been six cases of herpes zoster developing shortly after administration of the Pfizer vaccine in patients with disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis since December 2020, according to Victoria Furer, MD, of Tel Aviv University, and colleagues.
Little has been known about the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines among patients with rheumatic diseases, because immunosuppressed individuals were not included in the initial clinical trials, they explained.
After the first dose of the vaccine, she reported malaise and headache, and 4 days after the shot she developed severe pain in the left eye and forehead, along with a rash along the distribution of the ophthalmic division of the V cranial nerve - herpes zoster ophthalmicus.
Two days after receiving the second dose of the COVID vaccine, she reported pain and had a vesicular skin rash on the lower abdomen, inguinal area, buttock, and thigh, and was given valacyclovir.
Her zoster symptoms resolved within 3 weeks and she received the second vaccine dose on schedule with no further side effects or disease flare.
Furer and colleagues noted that there had been no reports of herpes zoster in the clinical trials of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, and that, to their knowledge, this is the first case series of these events among patients with autoimmune/inflammatory diseases.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccine/92106
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