The scientists from the Departmentof Epidemiology, Faculty of Military Health Sciences, University of Defense tested a new vaccineagainst stripherpes inadults. The received results of this clinical study have been published in oneof the most prestigiousjournalTheNewEngland Journal ofMedicine.

The aim of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the new candidate vaccine in its ability to reduce a risk of getting shingles in adults. The results showed high, 97.2% effectiveness of the new vaccine. Only three specialized military centers in the Czech Republic were involved in this international evaluation study. Not only the research team of the Faculty of Military Health Sciences under the leadership of Col. Prof. Roman Chlíbek, MD, PhD (Lt. Col. Ass. Prof. Jan Smetana, M.D., Ph.D.), but also the research teams of the Military Health Institute in Czech Budejovice and Brno were involved.

The New England Journal of Medicine, one of the world oldest medical journals, which has been published in the US continuously since 1812, belongs to the most cited journals of all time. It has the second highest impact factor (besides the oncology journal CA – A Cancer Journal for Clinicians) of all journals registered in the database ISI Web of Knowledge. Its IF achieved 54.42 in 2013. Since 1945 almost 97,309 articles have been published in this journal and among them 86 works were prepared solely in cooperation with authors from the Czech Republic, in fact from Czechoslovakia.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1501184

Author: Hana Hlaváčková, Eva Drahokoupilová, Photo: Dita Zetochová​​​