Herpes Zoster Is Associated with Prior Statin Use: A Population-Based Case-Control Study

BACKGROUND: This study investigated the association between statin use and herpes zoster (HZ) occurrence in a population-based case-control study. METHODS: Study subjects were retrieved from the Taiwan Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2000. This study included 47,359 cases with HZ and 142,077 controls. We performed conditional logistic regression analyses to calculate the odds ratio (OR) to present the association between HZ and having previously been prescribed statin. RESULTS: We found that 13.0% of the sampled subjects had used statins, at 15.5% and 12.1% for cases and controls, respectively (p<0.001). A conditional logistic regression analysis suggested that the adjusted OR of being a statin user before the index date for cases was 1.28 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.24∼1.32) compared to controls. Subjects aged 18∼44 years had the highest adjusted OR for prior statin use among cases compared to controls (OR: 1.69; 95% CI: 1.45∼1.92). Furthermore, we found that the ORs of being a regular and irregular statin user before the index date for cases were 1.32 (95% CI: 1.27∼1.38) and 1.23 (95% CI: 1.181.29), respectively, compared to controls. CONCLUSIONS: We concluded that prior statin use was associated with HZ occurrence.