Shingles on the forearm
Find information on thousands of medical conditions and prescription drugs.

Shingles

Herpes zoster, colloquially known as shingles, is the reactivation of varicella zoster virus, leading to a crop of painful blisters over the area of a dermatome. It occurs very rarely in children and adults, but its incidence is high in the elderly (over 60), as well as in any age group of immunocompromised patients. It affects some 500,000 people per year in the United States. Treatment is generally with antiviral drugs such as acyclovir. Many patients develop a painful condition called postherpetic neuralgia which is often difficult to manage. more...

Home
Diseases
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
Sabinas brittle hair...
Saccharopinuria
Sacral agenesis
Saethre-Chotzen syndrome
Salla disease
Salmonellosis
Sandhoff disease
Sanfilippo syndrome
Sarcoidosis
Say Meyer syndrome
Scabies
Scabiophobia
Scarlet fever
Schamberg disease...
Schistosomiasis
Schizencephaly
Schizophrenia
Schmitt Gillenwater Kelly...
Sciatica
Scimitar syndrome
Sciophobia
Scleroderma
Scrapie
Scurvy
Selachophobia
Selective mutism
Seminoma
Sensorineural hearing loss
Seplophobia
Sepsis
Septo-optic dysplasia
Serum sickness
Severe acute respiratory...
Severe combined...
Sezary syndrome
Sheehan syndrome
Shigellosis
Shingles
Shock
Short bowel syndrome
Short QT syndrome
Shprintzen syndrome
Shulman-Upshaw syndrome
Shwachman syndrome
Shwachman-Diamond syndrome
Shy-Drager syndrome
Sialidosis
Sickle-cell disease
Sickle-cell disease
Sickle-cell disease
Siderosis
Silicosis
Silver-Russell dwarfism
Sipple syndrome
Sirenomelia
Sjogren's syndrome
Sly syndrome
Smallpox
Smith-Magenis Syndrome
Sociophobia
Soft tissue sarcoma
Somniphobia
Sotos syndrome
Spasmodic dysphonia
Spasmodic torticollis
Spherocytosis
Sphingolipidosis
Spinal cord injury
Spinal muscular atrophy
Spinal shock
Spinal stenosis
Spinocerebellar ataxia
Splenic-flexure syndrome
Splenomegaly
Spondylitis
Spondyloepiphyseal...
Spondylometaphyseal...
Sporotrichosis
Squamous cell carcinoma
St. Anthony's fire
Stein-Leventhal syndrome
Stevens-Johnson syndrome
Stickler syndrome
Stiff man syndrome
Still's disease
Stomach cancer
Stomatitis
Strabismus
Strep throat
Strongyloidiasis
Strumpell-lorrain disease
Sturge-Weber syndrome
Subacute sclerosing...
Sudden infant death syndrome
Sugarman syndrome
Sweet syndrome
Swimmer's ear
Swyer syndrome
Sydenham's chorea
Syncope
Syndactyly
Syndrome X
Synovial osteochondromatosis
Synovial sarcoma
Synovitis
Syphilis
Syringomas
Syringomyelia
Systemic carnitine...
Systemic lupus erythematosus
Systemic mastocytosis
Systemic sclerosis
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
Medicines

In some patients, herpes zoster can reactivate subclinically with pain in a dermatomal distribution without rash. This condition is known as zoster sine herpete and may be more complicated, affecting multiple levels of the nervous system and causing multiple cranial neuropathies, polyneuritis, myelitis, or aseptic meningitis.

The word herpes came from Greek, which is cognate with serpent and, as can be expected, herpetology. Interestingly, the skin disease is also commonly known as "snake" in Chinese.

Signs and symptoms

Often, pain is the first symptom. This pain can be characterized as stinging, tingling, numbing, or throbbing, and can be pronounced with quick stabs of intensity. Then 2-3 crops of red lesions develop, which gradually turn into small blisters filled with serous fluid. A general feeling of unwellness often occurs.

As long as the blisters have not dried out, HZ patients may transmit the virus to others. This could lead to chickenpox in people (mainly young children) who are not yet immune to this virus.

Shingles blisters are unusual in that they only appear on one side of the body. That is because the chickenpox virus can remain dormant for decades, and does so inside the spinal column or a nerve fiber. If it reactivates as shingles, it affects only a single nerve fiber, or ganglion, which can radiate to only one side of the body. The blisters therefore only affect one area of the body and do not cross the midline. They are most common on the torso, but can also appear on the face (where they are potentially hazardous to vision) or other parts of the body.

Diagnosis

The diagnosis is visual — very few other diseases mimic herpes zoster. In case of doubt, fluid from a blister may be analysed in a medical laboratory.

Pathophysiology

The causative agent for herpes zoster is varicella zoster virus (VZV). Most people are infected with this virus as a child, as it causes chickenpox. The body eliminates the virus from the system, but it remains dormant in the ganglia adjacent to the spinal cord or the ganglion semilunare (ganglion Gasseri) in the cranial base.

Generally, the immune system suppresses reactivation of the virus. In the elderly, whose immune response generally tends to deteriorate, as well as in those patients whose immune system is being suppressed, this process fails. (Some researchers speculate that sunburn and other, unrelated stresses that can affect the immune system may also lead to viral reactivation.) The virus starts replicating in the nerve cells, and newly formed viruses are carried down the axons to the area of skin served by that ganglion (a dermatome). Here, the virus causes local inflammation in the skin, with the formation of blisters.

Read more at Wikipedia.org


[List your site here Free!]


Vaccine gains: shot protects seniors from shingles flare-ups
From Science News, 6/4/05 by N. Seppa

A new vaccine has prevented half the cases of shingles in elderly people participating in a trial. When the painful disease did appear, it was generally less severe and cleared up faster than it did in study participants who got an inert shot.

The findings could pave the way for regulatory approval of the experimental vaccine. "I wouldn't hesitate to give it to anyone over 60," says study coauthor Michael N. Oxman, a virologist at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System and the University of California, San Diego. People with compromised immunity might have to receive smaller vaccine doses than those given in the experiment, says Oxman, who himself received the shot in a preliminary test of the vaccine.

For the moment, the vaccine is called the live attenuated Oka/Merck VZV by its maker, Merck & Co. of Whitehouse Station, N.J.

Shingles is the old-age aftershock of chicken pox. Both diseases arise from a single virus, varicella-zoster. Children who contract the virus routinely recover from chicken pox but harbor the virus in their nervous systems. In adulthood, for reasons still unclear, the virus can awaken as shingles, also called herpes zoster.

Symptoms of shingles include a rash on the face or trunk accompanied by a combination of numbness, itching, and pain that can last months

or longer. Antiviral treatments can offer some relief.

In the study, doctors at 22 medical centers enrolled more than 38,000 people over age 59, randomly assigning half to receive the vaccine and half to get a placebo. Over 3 years, 642 of the placebo recipients but only 315 of the vaccinated group developed shingles, Oxman and his colleagues report in the June 2 New England Journal of Medicine.

Vaccination also cut by two-thirds the number of people who developed postherpetic neuralgia, a complication of shingles in which pain lingers after the rash heals.

Doctors began immunizing children against chicken pox in 1995, but that vaccine doesn't prevent shingles later in life because even the weakened virus used in the vaccine can hide in nerves. However, virus from a chicken pox vaccination would probably produce only a mild case of shingles, Oxman says.

While the chicken pox vaccine stirs production of antibodies, the shingles, or zoster, vaccine triggers immune system T cells that thwart shingles. But how these cells accomplish this feat is poorly understood, Oxman says.

Several generations of middle-aged and older people who had chicken pox as youths would benefit from the new vaccine, says Donald H. Gilden, a neurologist at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver.

"I'm in favor of getting the vaccine marketed," he says. If its protection wanes over time, a booster might be needed, he says.

The rare person who's had neither chicken pox nor chicken pox immunization won't get shingles and shouldn't get this new vaccine, Gilden says. Shingles strikes about 500,000 people in the United States each year, most over the age of 50.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Science Service, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group

Return to Shingles
Home Contact Resources Exchange Links ebay