Shingles is a nasty often painful viral condition that most often affects older people. It is usually heralded by excessively sensitive, tingling or burning skin where the shingles rash will eventual appear. The area is often painful. Some patients might experience fever, headache and enlarged lymph nodes.

The characteristic shingles rash appears a few days later typically as a band or patch of red spots on the side of the trunk or face. It is usually present on one side only. The rash will then develop into fluid-filled blisters that then collapse, forming small ulcers. These will then dry out crust.

Pain in the area of the rash that persists even after it has disappeared, called post-herpetic neuralgia is not uncommon and is more likely to occur the older you are. People who have this post-herpetic pain for a long time often become depressed


Shingles is in fact a reactivation of the virus infection that causes chickenpox. After a person has had chickenpox the virus remains in their body, lying dormant in part of the nervous system.

For some reason, that is not really understood, often many years later, the virus comes back travelling down one of the nerves to the skin, where it causes a rash in the area of skin supplied by that nerve.

It's not clear what triggers this reactivation of the chickenpox virus but it may be linked to changes in the immune system such as an infection elsewhere in the body, or after physical or emotional shock. Trying to make sure that your immune system is not weakened may help to prevent this occurring.

Around one in four people will develop shingles in their lifetime, with men and women affected equally. Although it can also occur in younger people and those with a weakened immune system, it is more common in older age groups.

The skin blisters that form in shingles are full of the chickenpox virus, which means a person with shingles is infectious. You can catch chickenpox from someone with shingles, if you've never had the infection and therefore aren't immune. But you can't catch shingles from someone with shingles or indeed from someone with chickenpox.

Most adults - about 95 per cent - have been exposed to chickenpox and are immune, even though many aren't aware of it (they may have had only a mild dose of chickenpox when they were young). However, a small number of adults aren't immune and will be at risk. Also, when the immune system is suppressed (for example, when someone is being treated for cancer), a person can catch chickenpox for a second time.

Shingles is the viral that do the effect in nerve endings in the body. we find so painful. it is also known as Chicken pocks.

Yes it is true that the shingles virus comes from the chickenpox virus that lies dormant and is triggered by a low immune system after illness and often in old age. It is really an opportunist infection but is very painful as you say and can last for a very long time and make the sufferer feel very unwell. On the other hand it can be quite mild hardly even affecting the sufferer and only really diagnosed by a doctor.