Shingles & FOB at 50

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For years already, I've been counting down to age 50. No, not that I look forward to enter late-life crisis. It's a milestone for two additional medical actions to take: shingles vaccination and FOB test.

Shingles vaccination is only for those aged 50+ because clinical trials were done only on those cohort, presumably it's the cohort most at risk of contracting shingles. Current vaccine requires two shots (2 to 4 months ago) and it lasts a liftime, thank goodness. Not cheap though: price is around RM 900 - 1000 per shot.

Coincidentally, Ban's mother mentioned shingles vaccine but for a different reason: there is a study that shows "among the vaccinated, those who remained cognitively healthy were less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment, and those who did develop dementia were nearly 30% less likely to die from it over the course of nine years." "More research is needed to confirm the findings—but the study is a particularly strong one......because of its randomized controlled nature."

Through a deal with a clinic, bulk purchase (for a group of people) lowered the price to RM 725 per shot. I recently got my first one and will get another one in July. Aside from soreness at the injection side that last about a week, I had low grade fever the day after the injection. A tablet of paracetamol easily overcame that. Took it twice on that day.

As for FOB test, my mum's sister was diagnosed with colon cancer years ago. Since none of my immediate family members have it too, I do not need to do colonoscopy, according to "Quick Reference for Healthcare Providers: Management of Colorectal Carcinoma" by Malaysia's Ministry of Health. Instead, yearly FOB test (until age 75) is sufficient.

I came across this at Big Pharmacy in recent years:




How convenient: do at home and results is out in 5 mins. Later, I found out that this was an initiative by the ministry to make available affordable and convenient FOB home test kit. Great! It's only RM 56 and this one, made by Prima, is apparently well known internationally as it was included in a study. Its accuracy is about 93%. Technically, it's accuracy at 95% confidence interval is between 89% and 97%.

I tested negative. Yay! 

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