Long story short: I am a 31 year old male who just came down with shingles on Friday, and was diagnosed with strep throat today. Notably, I also just had strep throat back in September. Maybe I’m reading too much into things, but it seems like I’ve just been getting sick WAY too often lately (and shingles at this age was particularly alarming.) Is this just bad luck? Or is it possible that I have a truly shitty immune system?—and if that is the case, how does one go about “testing” for that?
Unfortunately I don’t have enough information to be able to comment on this confidently. Shingles can certainly happen at this age without immune compromised state; I would recommend discussing with your physician, and if further evaluation is recommended based on your infectious/immunologic history, the initial steps could involve things like checking for HIV infection or measuring immunoglobulin levels to rule out common variable immunodeficiency.
However, if I were seeing a 31 year old who had been previously healthy and got strep throat twice (assuming this was actually confirmed to be streptococcal infection by microbiologic testing, and not just presumed based on symptoms), this might not necessarily prompt me to initiate an immunologic evaluation.
Wanted to follow up in here after seeing a similar thread pop up. After the shingles and strep throat fiasco, I sadly managed to COVID a couple weeks later, just to add insult to injury. I can say that I work in a pediatric PT/OT/SLP clinic, so there are certainly occupational exposures to be concerned about. With that said, I do try to follow all the standard advice (handwashing 2x/hour, masking) and think I’ve checked most of the boxes of a health-promoting lifestyle. Sadly, I have developed a reputation around the workplace of being sick alarmingly frequently. It’s a bummer. Thank you for your input though, Austin.