>Subject: vaccination against zoster
It would be unlikely that this would work very well. Elderly patients who are
prone to Zoster usually have quite adequate levels of antibodies against
Zoster, from previous exposure to Varicella. IF you were to immunize them with
live varicella vaccine (just becoming available in the US but available in
Japan for years), you might predict that the vaccine wouldn't "take" due to
pre-existing neutralizing antibodies. Another problem is that Zoster is quite
sporadic and a trial would take years of surveillance and thousands of
vilunteers, just to wait for the occasional occurrence of Zoster.
