Seniors who’ve had shingles have a low short-term risk for coming down with the painful skin condition again, regardless of vaccination status, researchers say.

“The risk of having a recurrent shingles episode is not as high as previous research indicates,” Kaiser Permanente researcher Hung-Fu Tseng, Ph.D., said. 

Investigators studied records of over 6,000 people who had shingles at least once. Two years later, there were fewer than 30 recurrent cases of shingles, with very little difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated participants. Findings were published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.