Shingles: Every fourth person will get it sooner or later. The doctor Giuliano Piccoliori recommends risk groups vaccination against herpes zoster.
In the last ten years there has been an increase in herpes zoster cases across Italy.
This skin disease, also known as shingles, is a viral disease. Characteristic are small painful blisters on the skin surface. The risk groups include people who have already had chickenpox. South Tyrol’s Institute for General Medicine and Public Health provides information on the importance of herpes zoster vaccination.
“Every year around 150,000 people in Italy contract herpes zoster. Here in South Tyrol, every fourth person will sooner or later develop shingles,” warns Giuliano Piccoliori, Scientific Director of the Institute for General Medicine and Public Health in Bozen.
“As a family doctor, I’ve recently noticed a greater severity of the physical effects of shingles. This is especially true for the most feared consequence – the so-called post-herpetic neuralgia. This is severe pain after the occurrence of shingles. They are similar to those caused by a burn, sometimes a sting. This has to do with the inflammation of the nerve: This is affected by the reactivation of the varicella virus,” explains Dr. Piccoliori. This type of pain occurs in almost a quarter of cases. They can last a few weeks or months, sometimes even years, if not a lifetime.
“Sleeping” chickenpox leads to shingles
First of all, it must be clarified that nobody can be infected directly with herpes zoster. “Shingles is caused by reactivation of the varicella virus (chickenpox).
This virus ‘sleeps’, so to speak, for years – sometimes even for life – in the nerve nodes. Herpes zoster sufferers can only rarely transmit chickenpox to people who have never had varicella or who are not vaccinated. About one in three carriers of the varicella virus will develop shingles at some point in their lives,” emphasizes Dr. Giuliano Piccoliori, general practitioner and Sprengel hygienist in Val Gardena.
symptoms
The origin of the word ‘herpes zoster’ already describes the main symptoms of this disease: herpes means ‘creeping damage’ in ancient Greek, while zoster means ‘belt’.
The form of the rash is also the reason for the word ‘shingles’: The groups of nodules and blisters are arranged like a belt on the reddened skin (hence the term ‘rose’). “The most obvious symptom of herpes zoster is the appearance of skin lesions in the form of blisters that cause itching. It is characteristic of the zoster rash that it affects only one side of the body. If the blisters – and at least the skin lesions – also affect the other half of the body, it is usually not herpes zoster. In the areas of the body affected by the rash, the pain is manifested by severe burning and itching. Sometimes there is also a fever,” explains Dr. Piccoliori.
“Complications can occur, such as zoster oticus, which affects the ear and can lead to deafness, and zoster ophthalmicus, which affects the eye and can lead to blindness in the worst cases,” emphasizes Piccoliori. Both of these developments usually require immediate hospitalization and treatment. In addition, there is the dreaded post-herpetic neuralgia, the chronic and very painful inflammation of the affected nerve. It can be very debilitating and very difficult to treat.