Original ArticleIncreased Risk of Herpes Zoster in Children with Asthma: A Population-Based Case-Control Study
Section snippets
Methods
Olmsted County, Minnesota, is an excellent setting in which to conduct a population-based epidemiologic study because medical care is virtually self-contained within the community (95%). Under the auspices of the Rochester Epidemiology Project, each patient is assigned a unique identifier; all clinical diagnoses are electronically indexed, and essentially all medical care and providers are linked. Both Mayo Clinic and Olmsted Medical Center Institutional Review Boards approved the study.
The
Results
A total of 277 eligible patients with HZ were identified, of whom 47.3% were male, and 92.0% were white. The mean age at diagnosis of HZ was 9.8 years. Characteristics of the patients with HZ and matched controls are summarized in Table II. As expected, the proportion of patients with a documented history of varicella infection (chickenpox) was higher in the HZ group compared with controls (54% vs 22%; P < .001). Neither a history of previous varicella infection (85% in children with asthma vs
Discussion
We found that a history of asthma was significantly associated with an increased risk of HZ in children. The population-attributable risk percentage for asthma in all subjects was 12%, suggesting that approximately 12% of the disease burden of HZ could be attributable to asthma at a population level. Thus, this report potentially expands the impact of asthma to include a non–airway-related infection.
The incidence of HZ in the present study is within the range of reported incidence rates of HZ
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Supported by the Clinician Scholarly Award from the Mayo Foundation, the Rochester Epidemiology Project (R01 AG34676 from the National Institute on Aging), and the UK National Immunization Council for data on childhood HZ and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (R21 AI101277 to B.Y.). The authors declare no conflicts of interest.