Turning 50? Go Get a Shingles Vaccine

It’s extremely effective at preventing a super-unpleasant infection

Barbara Stepko and Rachel Nania,

Updated September 12, 2025

AARP

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Published October 30, 2020

/ Updated September 12, 2025

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Shingles is sneaky. It’s caused by the same virus as chickenpox, varicella-zoster, which lies dormant for decades in the body, ready to pounce.

“Our body gets it under control, but it never fully goes away and lives in our nerves,” says Dr. Ian Neel, an associate professor of medicine and clinical lead of the Geriatric Medicine Consult Services at Senior Behavioral Health at UC San Diego Health. “But as we age, our immune system wanes, and it puts us at higher risk of this virus breaking out of its cage and reactivating.”

In the U.S., 1 in 3 people will get shingles, usually after age 50, with the risk of complications climbing sharply after age 60. Since the risk rises with age, half of those who live to 85 will experience at least one episode.

Shingles’ most common symptom is an angry, blistering rash. And about 10 to 18 percent of people who develop that rash will also experience a complication known as postherpetic neuralgia, a condition that affects the nerve fibers and skin, causing burning—and sometimes incapacitating — pain that can last for months (or even years) after the rash disappears.

“Shingles rarely kills you,” says Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. “But it can make you wish you were dead.”

Enter Shingrix, a vaccine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2017. Unlike Zostavax, its predecessor, Shingrix is “spectacularly effective,” Schaffner says.

The numbers support his claim. The two-dose course of Shingrix is 97 percent successful at preventing shingles in people in their 50s and 60s, and 91 percent successful for those in their 70s and older. (That protection stays at over 85 percent in people 70-plus for four years after they get the vaccination.)

What’s more, studies suggest the vaccine may also lower the risk of shingles-related strokes in older adults. Plus, it may have additional health benefits. (Read more below.)

Why more adults aren’t getting the super-effective vaccine

Despite such impressive results, federal data has found that less than half of older adults reported receiving the vaccine in 2018. Uptake has improved in recent years, however, following the implementation of the 2022 prescription drug law that eliminated cost sharing for the vaccine, according to research published in JAMA.

What’s behind the hesitation? A couple of things.

First, says Dr. Kristin Christensen, an internal medicine specialist affiliated with Penn Medicine, in Radnor, Pennsylvania, some of us don’t take shingles as seriously as we should.

“People think, If it’s not going to kill me, I don’t need it, without realizing that shingles can be incapacitating, causing severe pain that can really limit people’s functioning,” she says.

What’s more, difficulty in getting the vaccine may have discouraged those who sought it out early on. The company that makes the vaccine couldn’t keep up with the initial demand, resulting in long waiting lists at pharmacies. (It’s more widely available now.)

Also, there’s the ouch factor — not the needle but the way the body initially responds to the vaccine itself.

“This is a moderately reactogenic vaccine, meaning 20 to 30 percent of people may get a fever, along with pain and swelling at the injection site,” says Dr. Gregory Poland, an infectious disease expert and founder of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group. However, he notes, the second dose tends to cause less of a reaction, so people do better with it.

“And the good news is that these symptoms almost always will go away on their own in just a few days,” says Dr. Pritish K. Tosh, an infectious disease specialist at the Mayo Clinic.

Besides, Schaffner says, “having your arm hurt for a day or so is a small price to pay to avoid this infection.”

In fact, he adds, “I couldn’t be more insistent and enthusiastic about any vaccine more than the shingles vaccine.”

What to know about the shingles vaccine

Who needs it? The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that everyone 50 and older get Shingrix, even if they had the earlier recommended vaccine Zostavax or if they’ve already had a bout of shingles.

Older adults should also get this vaccine, whether or not they remember having had chickenpox as a child. Why? More than 99 percent of Americans over the age of 40 have been exposed to the varicella-zoster virus, even if they don’t recall getting chickenpox.

How often? It’s not an annual vaccine, like the flu shot. You need to complete the series only once (it’s two doses spaced two to six months apart). The vaccine is more than 90 percent effective after you’ve had both shots.

Why do you need it? One in 3 people will get painful, occasionally debilitating shingles, usually after age 50, and the risk increases as we get older. By age 85, half of adults will have experienced at least one outbreak.

Medicare enrollees with Part D don’t have any out-of-pocket costs for vaccines that the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommends for adults, including the shingles vaccine, under the 2022 prescription drug law. This rule went into effect Jan. 1, 2023, and national data suggests it has helped increase the number of older adults getting vaccinated for shingles.

Other benefits of the shingles shot

The shingles vaccine may do more than protect you from a painful rash and all of the complications that can ensue. Research has linked it to a few other benefits:

Brain: A recent study published in the journal Nature found that older adults in Wales who received the shingles vaccine were 20 percent less likely to develop dementia over the next seven years than those who did not get the shot. Previous studies have reached similar conclusions.

“It was a really striking finding,” Dr. Pascal Geldsetzer, an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford Medicine and senior author of the new study, said in a news release. “This huge protective signal was there, any which way you looked at the data.”

The findings support a theory that viruses that affect the nervous system, like the virus that causes shingles, can make people more vulnerable to cognitive decline. Researchers have also seen brain benefits linked to the flu vaccine and other routine immunizations.

Heart: The shingles vaccine has also been linked to heart benefits. A literature review and meta-analysis presented at the 2025 European Society of Cardiology Congress found that shingles vaccination was associated with a lower risk of heart attack and stroke, compared with no vaccination.

Among adults 50 and older, vaccination was associated with a 16 percent reduction in cardiovascular events. Scientists say more research needs to be done to determine whether the association can be attributed to the vaccine.

COVID-19: A large retrospective study, published in 2022 in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, suggests that the Shingrix vaccine may offer a reduction in COVID-19 risk of diagnosis or hospitalization.

Researchers studied data from the electronic health records of Kaiser Permanente Southern California members age 50 and older, between March 1 and Dec. 31, 2020.

One analysis compared COVID-19 diagnoses and hospitalizations between people who had received at least one dose of the shingles vaccine and those who had not. The other analysis examined shingles vaccination status among people who tested positive for COVID and people whose tests were negative.

What they found: Individuals who received at least one dose of the Shingrix vaccine were 16 percent less likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19. Shingles vaccine recipients were also 32 percent less likely to be hospitalized during the trial period.

Researchers think the vaccine may train the body to react more efficiently to any pathogen it encounters, including the coronavirus.

“Our thought was that the shingles vaccine could potentially ramp up the immune system in a way that would also protect against COVID-19,” Dr. Bradley Ackerson, one of the study’s lead authors, said in a news release.

However, the researchers stress that people should not use these results as an excuse to not get COVID-19 shots.

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Barbara Stepko was a longtime health and lifestyle writer, and former editor at Women’s Health and InStyle. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Parade and other national magazines.

Rachel Nania is an award-winning health editor and writer at AARP.org, who covers a range of topics including diseases and treatments.