Shingles Topics

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• cell cultures
• zoster virus
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• oral doses
• chickenpox
• varicella
• high risk
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• weller
• herpes
• immunity
• rationale
• isolation
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Shingles, Shingles

Looking for Herpes Zoster?

The initial infection with varicella zoster virus (VZV) causes the acute (short-lived) illness chickenpox, and generally occurs in children and young people. Once an episode of chickenpox has resolved, the virus is not eliminated from the body but can go on to cause shinglesan illness with very different symptomsoften many years after the initial infection.

The rationale is that until the entire population could be immunized, adults who have previously contracted VZV would derive benefit from occasional exposure to VZV (from children), which serves as a booster to their immunity to the virus and may reduce the risk of shingles later on in life.

In people who are at a high risk for repeated attacks of shingles, five daily oral doses of aciclovir are usually effective.

Physicians began to report that cases of herpes zoster were often followed by chickenpox in the younger people who lived with the shingles patients. The idea of an association between the two diseases gained strength when it was shown that lymph from a sufferer of herpes zoster could induce chickenpox in young volunteers. This was finally proved by the first isolation of the virus in cell cultures, by the Nobel laureate Thomas H. Weller in 1953.

Source: Wikipedia > Herpes Zoster