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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Aging and Public Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1511898
This article is part of the Research Topic The Challenge: Viral Infections and Initiation of Acute and Persistent Pain Phenotypes View all 4 articles

Association between frailty and postherpetic neuralgia in the elderly with herpes zoster

Provisionally accepted
Yunyan Shen Yunyan Shen 1Ping Lin Ping Lin 2*
  • 1 浙江中医药大学第四临床医学院, 浙江 杭州, China
  • 2 杭州市第三人民医院, 浙江 杭州, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Objective: To explore the impact of postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) on frailty in elderly patients with herpes zoster (HZ).Methods: A total of 300 elderly patients diagnosed with HZ were selected and admitted to our hospital in 2024. A basic data questionnaire gathered baseline information, and the FRAIL scale was employed to evaluate their initial frailty status. Patients who were non-frail at baseline were followed up for three months. They were categorized into the PHN group and the non-PHN group based on the occurrence of neuropathic pain during follow-up. Diverse scales were employed to evaluate frailty, nutritional status, anxiety, and depression among participants. The Chi-square or Kruskal-Wallis tests were employed to compare the two groups. The logistic regression model was undertaken to explore the impact of PHN on frailty.Results: Among the 300 elderly patients with HZ who satisfied the inclusion criteria, follow-up data were collected from 215 patients, comprising 85 cases in the PHN group and 130 cases in the non-PHN group. A prospective analysis of the 215 baseline non-frail patients showed that the incidence of frailty in older HZ patients was 14.9% (32). Univariate analysis revealed that the distributions of lesion site, lesion area, depression status, anxiety status, COPD, and nutritional score were statistically significant between the two groups (χ²=6. 127, 4.846, 13.316, 12.967, 6.234, H=2.592, P<0.05). Nevertheless, the distributions of age, gender, marital status, education level, hypertension, and diabetes were not statistically significant (P>0.05). Binary logistic regression analysis indicated that, after comprehensive adjustment for age, gender, lesion site, lesion area, depression status, anxiety status, COPD, and nutritional score, patients with PHN exhibited an higher risk of frailty compared to the non-PHN cohort (22 cases, OR=3.279, 95% CI=1.327-8.105; P=0.010).PHN increases the risk of frailty and is a significant factor influencing the progression of frailty in the elderly.

    Keywords: Frailty, Herpes Zoster, postherpetic neuralgia, the elderly, Pain

    Received: 15 Oct 2024; Accepted: 27 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Shen and Lin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ping Lin, 杭州市第三人民医院, 浙江 杭州, China

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