When is Shingles Contagious

Shingles is also called Herpes Zoster and it is a viral skin infection that occurs in adults. This viral infection appears in a contained location of the body. It has the peculiar characteristics of affecting only one side of the body, which could either be your left side or the right.

This viral skin infection resembles a lot like chickenpox, though the shingles blisters are very painful. The singles blisters appear in a strip or sometimes in a specific patch which contains several small blisters. These areas on the skin turn reddish-brown.

Well it turns out that this painful skin infection is the other Zoster cousin of the nasty chickenpox infection. Chickenpox is caused by the varicella-zoster virus (VZV), while shingles is caused by the Herpes Zoster virus (HZV)!

Therefore, it so happens that people who have been infected by chickenpox at some point in their lives are more susceptible to being infected by the shingles virus. Why, you may ask? Well the reason being that the VZV doesn't disappear from the human system, instead it remains dormant within the nerve tissues of the spinal cord and the brain.

The VZV mutates during the years of dormancy and when it reactivates; it comes out as HZV or shingles.

There is no explicit reason for its sudden outbreak, though two plausible reasons are believed to be the main culprits:

• That people who have suffered from chickenpox often suffer from a bout of shingles, when they come in contact with people who are suffering from chickenpox. The chickenpox virus infects the dormant virus to come out as shingles.

• The second reason being, that people who have a weak immune system are more prone to this infection. Which means all immunocompromised individuals.

When is Shingles the Most Contagious

This infection is at its most contagious stage, when the older blisters begin to heal, while more fresh blisters keep recurring.

Nevertheless, the contagious period stops when fresh blisters stop recurring. That is when the blisters begin to dry and form crusts. This stage is considered to be the non contagious period.

 It is safe to assume that it takes 4 weeks for the symptoms of shingles to fully show itself. Therefore, the virus is contagious from its inception of reactivation, which means that when the virus wakes up, the skin begins to itch and pain, thereby making one feel unpleasant.

 These shingles symptoms persist for a day or two until you develop patches of red rashes on one side of the body. It is on these rashes that the initial blisters pop out on.

Only those people who have had chickenpox can get shingles. People who have never suffered from chickenpox or ever had its vaccination will end up getting infected by chickenpox and not shingles, when infected by someone who has shingles rashes.

Though, sometimes in very rare cases, shingles may infect infants as well, that is because they have relatively weaker immune systems. They usually get it from older people who are infected as well.

The symptoms of shingles usually disappear along with the pain, provided medically approved analgesics are applied. Analgesics that contain Calamine or Capsaicin cream (Zostrix) have proven to show good results.

While antiviral drugs such as valacyclovir and famciclovir have had excellent results in curbing the virus from spreading further as well as controlling the pain.

Now the shingles vaccine (Zostavax by Merck ) has been introduced. Though, this vaccination can only be taken by adults who are 60 years and above and not people below this age group. This is because shingles is most likely to affect older people who have weaker immune systems.

All children are required to get themselves vaccinated with the Varicella vaccination that protects them from chickenpox. Recent studies show that children getting vaccinated against chickenpox curbs the spread of chickenpox which instead directly reduces the spread of shingles in older adults by 50%.