Shingles Herpes Zoster Pictures

Shingles herpes zoster pictures

        Shingles, also known as herpes zoster or postherpetic neuralgia, is a skin problem. Now, the medical textbook definition is much more complicated than this one, but the simpler one remains true nonetheless. To complete this definition of shingles (herpes zoster), here are a few details: its cause is very well known and impossible to dispose of.

        Basically, the appearance of herpes zoster is to be blamed on the varicella zoster virus. Sounds familiar? It should, since most people have been victims of this pesky little virus at some point in their life: it is the same pathogen agent that causes chicken pox.

        Technically, if a person has suffered from that very common childhood, he or she will develop herpes zoster at some point in their life. The most affected by shingles are people with low immunity. Unfortunately, this does not offer a lot of room for predicting who will suffer from an outbreak of herpes zoster and who will not, since everyone has periods of decreased immunity.

        Essentially, from a person with the flu to one with cancer or AIDS, anyone can present with the symptoms of shingles. However, specialists have determined that teenagers, young adults and people over the age of sixty are much more affected by herpes zoster then any other category of persons.

        When we speak of herpes zoster, the agent is of the latter part of the group of herpesviruses. The characteristic of this group of viruses is that they are not eliminated from the body after infection, with or without symptoms, but they remain latent for life in the body. Shingles herpes zoster lays usually in the nervous tissue.

        For shingles, a reactivation of varicella-zoster virus that remained in the body is not a second infection. Therefore only those who were once infected with Shingles herpes zoster can develop shingles.