![]() Today, scientists are expanding the virus’s list of effects. The British doctor’s hypothesis was largely on the mark. If the virus awakens and multiplies, copies of the virus travel back along nerves to the skin, and shingles, also called herpes zoster, flares up. Within a ganglion, the virus becomes dormant, remaining in the body for life. He proposed that during chicken pox, the virus travels from the infected skin - along nerves that detect sensation in the skin - to hubs of nerve cell bodies outside of the central nervous system, called ganglia. Hope-Simpson shared his hypothesis in a 1964 lecture. He also noted that the occurrence of shingles rose with age and that patients whose immune systems were suppressed, due to leukemia or radiation therapy, for example, were also at higher risk. Edgar Hope-Simpson demonstrated that shingles was not a new infection from outside of the body but a reawakening of the varicella zoster virus from within. A reawakeningĪ half century ago, a doctor in Cirencester, England, northwest of London, developed a hypothesis for how shingles arises, based on observations of 1,270 patients with either chicken pox or shingles in his practice from 1947 to 1962. (Yet supplies of the new vaccine aren’t keeping up with demand.) And in the lab, scientists recently uncovered a genetic message in the virus that may eventually provide a way to lock the virus in a permanent sleep. Food and Drug Administration approved Shingrix, a vaccine to prevent shingles in people 50 and older that outperforms an earlier vaccine, Zostavax. Researchers are fighting back against the virus. There are even hints of a connection between shingles in the eye and dementia. Recently, scientists have learned more about the virus’s ability to infect arteries, increasing the risk of stroke or causing headaches and vision problems. The list of nasty complications from the infection has also grown beyond the debilitating pain that persists in some people for months or years. Insinga et al/Journal of General Internal Medicine 2005 population, but this trend also holds for populations worldwide. Shingles can strike anyone infected with varicella zoster virus, but the risk really begins to climb with each year after age 50. The pain and rash are usually confined to the strip of skin connected to the infected nerve cells. children home from school until about 1995 (when a vaccine became available).ĭecades after its first assault, varicella zoster virus can mount a second attack from its hiding place within nerve cells, bringing pain, burning, numbness or itchiness to the skin, after which a blistery rash often blooms. The body eventually clears the itchy, red pox from the skin, but the virus remains, dormant in nerve cells. adult population, thanks to the virus’s first line of attack: chicken pox. Varicella zoster virus lives in about 95 percent of the U.S. Shingles is more common in people 50 and older. Hartman’s young age didn’t help with the diagnosis. ![]() As Hartman experienced, varicella zoster virus can cause a grab bag of symptoms that go beyond the typical torso rash. That’s the name for a shingles infection that strikes the facial nerve important to facial movement. ![]() To spare others the same trauma of a delayed diagnosis, Hartman arranged for Nagel to give a talk on the virus at the local hospital where staff missed the signs of the illness, known as Ramsay Hunt syndrome. She experienced terrible pain, hearing loss and weakened sensation on the right side of her face until the infection subsided. ![]() Hope Hartman had shingles in her right ear, which stumped the first doctors she saw. The pain subsided, and Hartman regained her hearing and the feeling in her face. Following an appointment with neurologist Maria Nagel of the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, Hartman was admitted to the university’s hospital to get another antiviral drug intravenously. Her right eye wouldn’t fully open or close. For about two weeks after her release from the hospital, Hartman coped with severe pain, hearing loss and difficulty eating. She “diagnosed it from an iPhone photo,” Hartman recalls.Īntiviral treatment didn’t fully clear the infection. She said it looked like zoster, better known as shingles, which is caused by the varicella zoster virus. Hartman was admitted to the hospital, where she started to lose sensation on the right side of her face.ĭuring that 2013 health crisis, Hartman’s husband, Mike, sent a picture of the ear to his mom, a nurse. The pain got so bad she went to a local emergency room, where the staff was flummoxed. At age 37, Hope Hartman developed a painful, burning rash in her right ear, in the part “you would clean with a Q-tip,” the Denver resident says.
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