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Also called: Herpes zoster, Postherpetic neuralgia When the itchy red spots of childhood chickenpox* disappear and life returns to normal, the battle with the virus that causes chickenpox seems won. But for too many of us this triumph of immune system over virus is temporary. The virus has not been destroyed but remains dormant in our nerve cells, ready to strike again later in life. This second eruption of the chickenpox virus is the disease called shingles or herpes-zoster. "I was having exams at college and I got a rash in a band around one side of my waist. The spots were very painful. At first I thought it was chickenpox, but I'd had that years before," recalls a young woman who had shingles in her twenties. The young woman's memory was correct. She did have chickenpox as a child. You cannot develop shingles unless you have had an earlier exposure to chickenpox, and most people who get chickenpox are at risk for shingles. The woman had the typical one-sided band of rash and pain of this common neurological disorder. Her age was unusual, however. While young people do develop shingles, the disease most often strikes after age 40. But since shingles is so common, affecting an estimated one-quarter of Americans at some point during their lifetimes, cases in young people are not rare. Source: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) |
