Herpes zoster risk and burden of disease in immunocompromised populations: a population-based study using health system integrated databases, 2009–2014

One in three people aged between 50 and 90 years will develop herpes zoster (HZ) and approximately one in ten will develop postherpetic neuralgia (PHN, defined as dermatomal pain lasting for at least three months after the acute phase of a HZ) [1]. A decrease of the specific cell-mediated immunity against varicella zoster virus (VZV) seems to be the cause of HZ development as a consequence of the VZV reactivation [2]. It could explain the increased risk of suffering HZ in ageing people and especially in people with immunocompromised (IC) conditions due to diseases or treatments that alter the immune response (Immunodeficiency disorders and autoimmune diseases, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), cancer, organ transplantation) [3‐6].

Both, HZ and PHN result in reduced quality of life as well as individual and societal healthcare costs [6‐8]. Its treatment, especially that of PHN, is extremely difficult and frustrating for both patients and specialists (who in most cases fail to mitigate the suffering of their patients) [9‐11]. Considering these difficulties, a live attenuated vaccine (Zoster Vaccine Live, ZVL) was commercialized in 2006 as a tool to prevent HZ and its complications, and it was licensed in many countries for its use in adults older than 50 years of age [12‐14]. Despite its availability, there is relatively scarce use of the current live attenuated vaccine in Spain, where there are efforts to introduce more recommendations for HZ vaccination [15]. The identification and definition of priority HZ at-risk groups is a key step for the design of vaccination programs.

Previous studies on HZ and PHN epidemiology using Real World Data have been developed in order to identify highly susceptible populations such as patients with diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or heart failure (HF) among others [1, 4, 9, 16‐18]. People with IC conditions are among the highest risk of developing HZ [3‐5]. However these cohorts cannot benefit from ZVL vaccine due to its contraindication in IC populations [19]. This is the reason why these IC populations have been normally excluded from many epidemiological studies to avoid confusion [1, 16, 17]. As an alternative, an adjuvanted recombinant Zoster vaccine (RZV) has been developed and was first approved in Canada followed by the US in 2017 for its use in adults aged 50 years and older [20, 21]. Clinical studies on immunogenicity, safety and efficacy of RZV have been completed or are ongoing for different IC conditions such as HIV, haematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) or transplant recipients or Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) [22‐25]. Their results will allow broadening the approved indication of RZV [21].

The estimation of the full burden of HZ disease including HZ incidence and recurrence rates, its complications and the evaluation of HZ risk for specific IC subpopulations constitutes a critical step to make an estimation of future impact of the RZV in these risk groups. So far, only a few studies assessed HZ incidence among patients with different IC conditions including populations large enough to allow comparison among the different conditions [3‐5, 26, 27]. However, none of them included risk estimations. As recently reviewed by Mareque et al., in Spain there is a lack of these types of studies and its heterogeneity and limited populations make it difficult to develop the definition of priority groups for the implementation of a future non-routine HZ vaccination program [15].

The Valencia Region of Spain has a population of around 5 million inhabitants, over 96% of which are insured by the Regional Health System (RHS) [1]. The Region counts with the Valencia health system Integrated Databases (VID), a healthcare electronic databases network gathering real world data (RWD) from hospitalization, primary care, specialist and medication, among other [28]. The quality of VID has been shown in several publications [1, 16, 29‐31]. Using the VID, the objective of the present study was to estimate the risk of HZ, its recurrence and complications in adults with a wide range of IC conditions in comparison with the IC-free cohort. Healthcare resources utilization was also assessed.

This is the first large (> 4 million) population-based study to date investigating the incidence of HZ, its complications and healthcare resources utilization in ≥18-years-old adults in Spain with a wide variety of IC conditions [15]. Our study showed that the adjusted risk of HZ increased by 51% among people with IC conditions. The overall incidence of HZ among individuals with the studied IC conditions considering PC visits and hospitalizations was almost twice as high as the incidence in the IC-free cohort. All the selected IC conditions were above the estimated overall IR in the IC-free cohort, rising up to twelvefold in patients with HSCT. The IR of HZ complications was about 5 times as high in the IC as in the IC-free cohorts. All these findings support that the selected IC conditions increase the risk and severity of HZ episodes and results in higher healthcare resources utilization.

The observed IR of HZ (5.02/1000 persons-year) for the overall study population (4,382,590 individuals aged ≥18 years) is aligned with previous publications [3, 15, 36]. Despite methodological differences such as case definitions or study designs that makes difficult the comparison in absolute values, our findings are consistent with those of other countries studies assessing burden of HZ disease in subjects with different IC conditions, in which there is a strong effect of impaired immune system on the risk of HZ, being HSCT, SLE, HIV or SOT among the most prone to develop a HZ [5, 26, 27]. Concretely in UK, with a study population of 3,698,346, HZ IRs in IC subpopulations raised up to sevenfold for HSCT patients [26], being the most susceptible to HZ as in other publications [3, 5, 27].

In our study, the IC-cohort represented around 13% of the study population. This percentage is difficult to compare among previous studies from different countries in which the values fluctuate from 1.86 in Japan [27] to 16.8 in UK [26] or 25.5–34 in Germany [5], depending on the selected IC conditions, case definitions, observation period and overall methodological heterogeneity. Nevertheless, aligned with these studies, ours reflects that this IC population involves an excesive proportion of the burden of HZ in Spain, with an overall risk of HZ 51% higher than IC-free population. Interestingly, risks estimations showed in our study were modeled using multivariate models. This is a qualitative difference with previous studies [3, 5, 26, 27] where risks estimations were based on rate comparisons, therefore, they are more prone to bias.

Considering all HZ-related complications, we showed that IC patients have more than twice the risk of hospitalization by a HZ complication than IC-free people. 70% of the HZ-related complications were associated to the CNS, with PHN as the most common. In our previous studies we described that 15.7% of the total HZ cases developed in people above 50 years old resulted in PHN lasting for at least three months after the acute phase of a HZ [1, 16, 17]. Note that the impact and burden of PHN in those studies could have been underestimated, as subjects with IC conditions were excluded from the study population. This decision was made to avoid confusion, since the only licensed vaccine at the time was the live attenuated vaccine, which is contraindicated for IC population. Despite the differences regarding population and objectives, these studies are complementary and allow us to conclude that HZ complications pose a great threat to IC patients, worsening their health status and raising the amount of health resources required.

Most of the publications agree that the risk of developing an HZ rises significantly with age, most likely caused by the decreasing cell-mediated immune response to the VZV due to the immunosenescence [32, 37]. This same upward trend is also observed in IC cohort with higher HZ IRs respect to IC-free in all age groups. Interestingly, the IR of HZ in the IC-population aged 50–59 years (9.55 cases/1000 persons-year) was comparable to the one in people aged 80+ in the IC-free group (9.54 cases/1000 persons-year), which indicates that patients with IC conditions are prone to develop HZ at a younger age than individuals IC-free. Age was a variable also associated with an increased risk of suffering HZ hospitalizations, HZ complications and HZ recurrence.

The recurrence rate of HZ ranged from < 1.5 to 6.8% among different studies [36]. Results variations depended on the age, immune status of the study population and, especially, on the follow-up period, being higher in studies with longer follow-up periods [36]. In our study, the Poisson regression analysis showed that the adjusted HZ-recurrence relative risk was 1.25 times higher in patients with IC conditions than in IC-free.

In addition to age and comorbidities, female gender has also shown an increased risk of developing HZ and suffering recurrences and PHN. This result is also in concordance with previous publications [38‐40]. It has been hypothesized that it could be due to differences in responses to latent viral infections, which is supported by the gender difference also reported in the incidence of herpes simplex [39]. However, sex differences regarding care-seeking behaviour could be also influencing these results based on secondary data [5]. A clue pointing in that direction could be the almost but not significant differences between men and women when HZ related complications were studied in hospitalization registers in the present study, although more research in this regard is required to draw conclusions.

The greatest strength of our study is, without a doubt, the large study population and the VID, a network of electronic health databases where all the information on each subject (demographic, hospital, PC, specialist, drug prescription and dispensation, etc.) can be linked at the patient level. However, some of its limitations are worth mentioning. Firstly, HZ-related hospitalization rates found are higher than other previously published. It probably represents an overestimation as we considered hospitalizations with HZ diagnoses in any diagnostic position and HZ could represent a secondary diagnosis. Secondly, the proportion of IC population increased during the study period. One of the reasons could be related to IC-cohort case definition, since once a diagnosis of a chronic IC condition was registered the patient remained in the IC-cohort group until the end of the follow-up period. It should also be considered that the individuals with none of the selected IC conditions diagnosed could be not necessarily immunocompetent. On the other hand, severity grade of the studied IC conditions and IC-related therapies have not being considered in this study which may impact the HZ IR and its complications. This lack opens the way for new research in this regard looking for associations between the severity or therapy and time to HZ episode.

As we previously have shown for some other underlying conditions such as Diabetes, COPD, or HF [16, 17], the greater risk of HZ in cohorts with IC conditions is linked to an increase in the utilization of health care resources. They attended more frequently to PC and specialized clinics due to HZ, were hospitalized more often and during longer periods, consumed more antivirals and their sick leaves due to HZ were longer. These data suggest that HZ episodes were more severe in the IC-cohort, contributing to a great reduction in their quality of life and increasing their healthcare-related costs, as previously indicated [41‐43].

In this study we estimate the burden of HZ disease in people with IC conditions in a Spanish Region of 5 million inhabitants. All the IC conditions studied were above the estimated overall IR in the IC-free cohort and the IR of HZ complications was about 5 times as high in the IC as in the IC-free cohorts. In conclusion, the selected IC conditions increase the risk and severity of HZ episodes and result in higher healthcare resources utilization. This first step should be followed by cost effectiveness studies that help us establishing the value of vaccinating these groups of patients when the new prevention strategies become approved in those risk groups.