Shingles: It’s Back!
Shingles, also known as herpes zoster is a viral infection that is caused by the same virus that produces chicken pox. 1,2 The virus is called varicella zoster. Shingles produces a painful rash on different area of the body. About 850,000 people contact shingles each year in the United States.3 Fifty percent of people over the age of eighty-five will have had a case of the shingles. Shingles can only occur in people who have had the chicken pox.
Shingles occurs more commonly in people over the age of fifty and the risks of shingles occurring greatly increases as age advances. The pain of the shingles rash can persist for weeks, months, or years after it heals. At that time it is known as post-herpetic neuralgia, PHN. 1,3
No one is sure what makes shingles occur, maybe a temporary weakness in the immunity; illness, trauma and stress could be triggers of an attack of herpes zoster. We do know that people with Hodgkin’s disease, chemotherapy, high doses of steroids, or advanced HIV patients have a higher risk at developing shingles.1,3
After a person has had the chicken pox, which is most generally as a child, the virus stays in the body. However, instead of staying in the blood, the virus moves into certain nerve cells, sensory ganglia. The immune system usually does a good job at keeping the virus in these cells. Occasionally through, the immune system is weakened and the virus begins to grow again. This time, when the virus escapes the nerve cells they create the shingles instead of the chicken pox.4 They do this by moving down the nerve fibers to the skin. This is where it can cause pain or a tingling sensation and the beginning of the characteristic shingles rash. This can occur decades after the initial i ...