![]() ![]() It is best to start treatment as soon as possible after you notice the rash. To confirm the diagnosis, your provider may order lab tests to look for the virus in fluid from a blister. The diagnosis is usually obvious from the appearance of the skin. Your healthcare provider will ask about your medical history and symptoms and will examine you. Once your blisters are crusted over, they are no longer contagious. If you have shingles, make sure that anyone who has not had chickenpox or the chickenpox shot does not come into contact with your blisters until the blisters are completely dry. However, if you have never had chickenpox, you may get chickenpox from close contact with someone who has shingles because the blisters contain chickenpox virus. You cannot get shingles from someone else. In some cases the pain can last for weeks, months, or years, long after the rash heals. The symptoms usually go away eventually, but it may take many months. When shingles occurs on the head or scalp, symptoms can include headaches and weakness of one side of the face, which causes that side of the face to look droopy. The painful rash may be in the area of your ear or eye. The rash also may appear on one side of your face or scalp. Shingles usually doesn't cross the midline of the body. The blisters are almost always on just one side of the body. Over the next 2 weeks the crusts drop off, and the skin continues to heal over the next several days to weeks.īecause shingles usually follows nerve paths, the blisters are usually found in a line, often extending from the back or side around to the belly. ![]() Within a few days after they appear, the blisters will turn yellow, then dry and crust over. One to 14 days after you start feeling pain, you will notice a rash of small blisters on reddened skin. You also may feel tired and ill with fever, chills, headache, and upset stomach or belly pain. The most common site is the back or upper abdomen. The first sign of shingles is often burning, sharp pain, tingling, or numbness in your skin on one side of your body or face. Emotional stress seems to be a common trigger as well. The virus may also become active again after the skin is injured or sunburned. Chronic use of steroid drugs may trigger shingles. It can also happen as a complication of cancer or AIDS or treatment of these illnesses. This may occur with normal aging, immune-suppressing medicines, or another illness, or after major surgery. A weakened immune system seems to allow reactivation of the virus. What exactly causes the virus to become active is not known. Later, if the virus becomes active again, shingles is the name given to the symptoms it causes. It moves to the roots of your nerve cells (near the spinal cord) and becomes inactive (dormant). After you recover from chickenpox, the chickenpox virus stays in your body. If you have had chickenpox, you are at risk for later developing shingles. This infection is most common in people over 50 years old, but young people can have it as well. You cannot develop shingles unless you have had a previous infection of chickenpox (usually as a child). Shingles (Herpes Zoster) What is shingles? Shingles is an infection caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox. ![]()
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