Merck faces a Zostavax shingles lawsuit alleging that their Zostavax shingles vaccine can cause the disease it is intended to prevent.

A group of plaintiffs has filed a lawsuit against Merck & Co. Inc., Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., and McKesson Corp., claiming that the Zostavax shingles vaccine is not effective and caused them to suffer severe, unwarned side effects. All of the plaintiffs in the Zostavax shingles lawsuit received the Zostavax shingles vaccine and shortly after developed shingles, the disease the vaccine is intended to prevent.

Shingles is a painful, rash-based disease which is thought to be related to the dormant chickenpox virus in the nervous system. The virus can be activated due to several factors such as disease, stress, aging, and immune modulation.

The Zostavax vaccine is an injection containing a weakened chicken pox virus. The vaccine, designed and manufactured by Merck, is supposed to boost the immune system in people over the age of 60 and protect against shingles. Side effects warned include headaches, local reaction to the injection, fever, joint pain, muscle pain, nausea, and chickenpox or shingles after the vaccine.

According to the Zostavax shingles lawsuit, many patients have reported adverse side effects to the vaccine. Adverse side effects have included spinal cord inflammation, postherpetic neuralgia, blindness, eye infections, retinal damage, hearing loss, autoimmune disorders, stroke, heart attack, facial paralysis, serious neurological disease, and more.

Since the vaccine’s approval in 2006, there have allegedly been over 1,000 submissions of serious adverse events reports made to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting Systems. Of the 1,111 submission made before September 2015, 36 of the reports included deaths from adverse reactions.

In response to the reports, the drug’s warnings were expanded by the FDA in 2016 to include potential vision damage caused by inflammation of the eye.

The Zostavax shingles lawsuit claims that the vaccine contains a strain of the live virus that is not weakened enough. A weakened version of the virus would boost the immune system in patients who receive the vaccine, but the virus in the vaccine is allegedly strong enough to cause shingles instead of preventing it.

In the Zostavax shingles lawsuit, the plaintiffs argue that patients are not sufficiently warned that the vaccine contains a strengthened, live version of the disease which can cause serious side effects in patients with pre-existing immune problems.

“Plaintiffs, each of them, were not informed of the risk of contracting persistent and chronic shingles, the very condition the ZOSTAVAX vaccine was intended to prevent. If Plaintiffs and/or their healthcare providers and pharmacies had access to the knowledge of such risk, Plaintiffs would not have voluntarily become inoculated with ZOSTAVAX vaccine,” the Zostavax shingles lawsuit states.

The Zostavax shingles lawsuit accuses Merck and the other manufacturers of negligence, defective design, failure to warn, breach of warranty, fraudulent misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, unjust enrichment, strict liability, and violation of New York consumer protection laws.

The plaintiffs seek compensatory damages, lost wages, punitive damages, treble damages, disgorgement, restitution, court costs, and attorneys’ fees.

The Zostavax Shingles Lawsuit is Case No. 2:18-cv-01592-SJF-AYS in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.