Media release: Herpes zoster as a marker of underlying malignancy

Open Medicine A peer-reviewed, independent, open-access journal. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Herpes zoster as a marker of underlying malignancy Today, Open Medicine <http://www.openmedicine.ca/> published a study assessing whether a diagnosis of herpes zoster is a risk factor for subsequent malignancy. Both herpes zoster—more commonly known as shingles--and cancer are associated with suppression of the immune system; however, it has been unclear what, if any, association there is between an earlier finding of shingles and later diagnosis of a malignant tumor. “This is, we believe, the largest study to date examining this association,” explains Dr. Karl Iglar, lead author on the paper published today, “Herpes zoster as a marker of underlying malignancy”. The research team looked back over records of adult patients with no previous diagnosis of cancer (or HIV) to identify 542 575 such patients with herpes zoster. “The incidence of cancer was significantly greater among individuals with herpes zoster than among those without herpes zoster, for both men and women and across all time intervals studied (up to 5 years),” the authors wrote. The study is one of the first to take a population-based approach to looking at a potential association between shingles and cancer. Unlike previous studies of the suspected association, the present study found a significant increase in cancer rates for both men and women and across the age span studied (18+). The authors found that...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Source Type: blogs