[Whitley]

Originally Posted by golfing eagles

First straightforward medical question in quite a while---thank you.

Yes, you must have had chicken pox to get shingles (Herpes zoster)

When you are originally infected with Varicella (chicken pox), preferably as a child, the virus stays dormant in 33 pairs of dorsal root ganglia and 12 pairs of cranial nerve ganglia for the rest of your life. At some later point in that life, either due to concurrent illness, immunosuppression, stress, or just age, the virus can "crawl" down one of those nerves and cause the classic shingles skin breakout in just one dermatome. (You can actually have 2 adjacent dermatomes affected, but anything more is disseminated Zoster, in which case make sure your will is up to date.)

Now, there will be people who claim they got Zoster but never had chicken pox. In reality, 90+% of the population know they had it, and of the 10% who don't think they had it, 95% will have Varicella antibodies. The 0.5% of the population that actually never had chicken pox CANNOT get shingles. Also, know this---you can't get shingles from someone with shingles, you can only get primary chicken pox if you are not immune.

Thank You. My medical records do not show chicken pox. Of course I can be in the ten percent who did not know. I mentioned to the doctor that I never had chicken pox and his brief answer was "yes you did". I had thought the unusual rashes and joint pain may be from cancer treatments I had. The pain is similar to what I felt when I was getting procrit shots. Thank you once again.