A couple has filed a lawsuit after the husband allegedly suffered side effects after the shingles vaccine.

Plaintiff Ronald P. said he was inoculated with the Zostavax vaccine at his local pharmacy to prevent shingles. He alleges that shortly after he was vaccinated, he began to experience tremors in his hands. The problems progressed into a decline of his cognitive abilities, and he reports that now he can no longer speak or walk. He alleges all of them are side effects after shingles vaccine shots.

Doctors eventually diagnosed Ronald with corticobasal degeneration (CBD), a rare neurological disorder that includes a progressive loss of nerve cells and shrinkage of more than one area of the brain. He allegedly has suffered and will continue to suffer painful injuries that require extensive medical care.

Side Effects After Shingles Vaccine Allegedly Hidden

The Zostavax vaccine by Merck & Co. and McKesson Corp. was approved by the FDA in 2006 to protect people aged 50 and older against shingles.

Shingles (herpes zoster) is a disease caused by the reactivation of the chickenpox virus (varicella zoster). Once a person has chickenpox, the virus remains in a dormant state inside the nervous system. When stress or a reduced immune system cause the virus to reactivate, it becomes manifested as shingles with blisters that follow a path of nerve endings.

Prior to the blisters appearing, the patient often notices fleeting pain or stabbing pains in the area of the skin where blisters will form.

Side effects after shingles vaccine can include developing a more virulent case of shingles than if the patient had never been vaccinated. This is because Zostavax is a live-attenuated virus vaccine, which means it is a live vaccine that allegedly has been weakened enough to avoid development of the disease, but remains strong enough to create immunity.

If a live virus vaccine is not weakened enough, it can increase the risk of developing the disease the vaccine was designed to prevent.

According to the Zostavax lawsuit, “Once injected, the attenuated live virus has been shown to recombine into more virulent strains causing disease.”

Zostavax is a more potent version of Varivax, which is Merck’s chickenpox vaccine. Varifax contains a minimum of 1,350 PFU (plaque-forming units) of the virus. Zostavax contains a minimum of 19,400 PFU.

The side effects after shingles vaccine warnings on the Zostavax label allegedly did not indicate that contracting shingles could be a risk. Ronald says that the only warning was that a rash and itching might develop at the injection site, “despite the fact that shingles was a noted occurrence during clinical trials of the vaccine.”

Prescribing information for Zostavax includes a warning that patients who receive the Zostavax vaccine can possibly transmit the virus to susceptible people they come into contact with because the vaccine is made from a live virus.

Merck is accused of knowing “its Zostavax vaccine was inherently defective and unreasonably dangerous” when it was used in the manner it was intended.

The Side Effects After Shingles Vaccine Lawsuit is Case No. 1:18-cv-06654 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.