Shingles In Elderly Dementia Patients

Shingles are more common than many people might think.

Shingles in elderly dementia patients. Complications of shingles in the elderly. Skin eruptions and pain along the spinal and cranial nerves caused by the reactivation of the herpes zoster chickenpox virus. A quick google suggets that crying may be common in shingles and that pain is not necessarily related to the rash i e. By age 60 one in three people will have had shingles.

Researchers examined 6 584 patients across 600 medical practices in the u k. Advice tips and support for family caregivers caring for a senior diagnosed with shingles. Shingles in the elderly. However the virus that causes shingles the varicella zoster virus can be spread from a person with active shingles to another person who has never had chickenpox.

According to dermatologist priya sampathkuma and colleagues as published in their 2009 mayo clinic proceedings article the herpes zoster virus may reactivate because of aging and or an impaired. Who had experienced the initial symptoms of shingles and had suffered a stroke for the first time. Shingles is most common in older people and those who have weak immune systems because of stress injury chronic disease or taking certain prescription drugs. In such cases the person exposed to the virus might develop chickenpox but they would not develop shingles.

Evidence of ties between herpes and dementia is starting to pile up. Shingles cannot be passed from one person to another. Alzheimer s disease is the most common form of dementia accounting for 60 80 of all cases of dementia. Signs of dying in the elderly with dementia.

Plaques found in the brains of alzheimer s patients. This must be very upsetting. Herepes zoster the virus that causes shingles has also been linked with dementia particularly vascular dementia. Shingles is a reactivation of the herpes zoster virus chicken pox and typically occurs among the elderly.

Half of all people will have developed shingles by the time they reach age 80. Although shingles can develop at any age it tends to occur most frequently in people between the ages of 60 and 80. Over time all types of dementia will lead to loss of memory loss of. Pain can occur in other places.

Its side effects can be agonizing. Reawakens as the virus that causes shingles in some people.