Predictive Factors for Postherpetic Neuralgia and Recent Pharmacotherapies

Postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) is a form of refractory chronic neuralgia that, despite the importance of prevention, currently lacks any effective prophylaxis. The efficacy of live zoster vaccine in preventing PHN was recently reported [1]. However, this vaccine appeared to be of limited use in prophylaxis[2]. PHN has a variety of symptoms and significantly affects patient quality of life [3-12]. Various studies have statistically analyzed predictive factors for PHN [13-23], but neither obvious pathogenesis nor established treatment has been clarified or established. We designed and conducted a study on the premise that statistical identifica‐ tion of significant predictors for PHN would contribute to the establishment of an evidencebased medicine approach to the optimal treatment of PHN. As a result, we reported our paper “Predictive Factors for Postherpetic Neuralgia Using Ordered Logistic Regression Analysis” [24].