Shin Jie Yong, MSc (Res)
1 min readDec 20, 2024

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Thank you for your comment and for pointing that out. After a second look, figure 3 may not be the best since I can't differentiate between Australia and Taiwan as well. I checked the data the authors used to make this graph, and here are the more specific numbers:

Australia (Stein et al., 2009): "Herpes zoster incidence rates increased with age, from an average of 7.2 per 1000 persons aged 50–59 years to 13.4 per 1000 for those aged 80 years or more."

Taiwan (Lin et al., 2010): "The annual incidence was 5.18 (95% CI, 5.15–5.21) cases per 1000 in people 40–49 years old, 8.36 (95% CI, 8.32–8.41) in people 50–59, 11.09 (95% CI, 11.02–11.16) in people 60–69, reaching a peak at 11.77 (95% CI, 11.69–11.85) in people 70 years old and older (12.32 for people 70–79, 10.21 for 80 years old and above)."

Based on this, the incidence of shingles seems to be higher in Taiwan for those in their 50s and 60s than in Australia, but the trend reverses for those in their 70s and 80s. But without proper statistical analyses, it's difficult to confirm which country has a higher incidence of shingles.

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Shin Jie Yong, MSc (Res)
Shin Jie Yong, MSc (Res)

Written by Shin Jie Yong, MSc (Res)

Named Stanford's world top 1% scientists | Medium's boost nominator | National athlete | Ghostwriter | Get my Substack: https://theinfectedneuron.substack.com/

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