Herpes zoster is an acute infectious disease of the mucous membranes of the skin caused by varicella-zoster virus. It is characterized by sudden, unilateral, dense clusters of herpes along nerve strips, with significant pain and very few recurrences after healing. The incidence of herpes zoster increases significantly with age, and the older the person, the more severe the disease. In recent years there has been an increase in specific types of herpes zoster, and it is common to see generalized herpes zoster or recurrent herpes zoster. Some patients are left with posterior neuralgia, which seriously affects the quality of life of patients.
1.Onset
Herpes infections account for about 10% to 20% in adults, but are more common in the elderly and immunodeficient individuals. Local trauma, some systemic diseases and acute and chronic infectious diseases and poisoning are common contributing factors.
2. Is herpes zoster contagious?
Herpes zoster patients cannot directly transmit herpes zoster virus, but can cause chickenpox epidemics in susceptible people.
3. Age of onset
The disease mostly occurs in the old, long-standing illness, weakness and other patients with low immunity, with the irregularity of life, the pressure of life increased in recent years, the onset of age gradually younger trend.
4, the onset of herpes zoster
Now medicine.
Modern medicine is caused by the herpes varicella-zoster virus. The virus enters the bloodstream through the mucous membrane of the respiratory tract to form viremia, and chickenpox occurs or is recessive infection. the nerves and skin to produce intense inflammation.
Ancestral medicine.
According to traditional Chinese medicine, this disease is mostly caused by internal injury to the emotions, depression of liver qi, which turns into fire and toxicity and develops externally through the liver and gallbladder meridians; or poor diet, loss of spleen health, internal dampness and heat, which overflows into the skin and feels external evil, which turns into toxicity and develops. If the elderly are deficient in righteousness, they often suffer from qi stagnation and blood stasis, qi deficiency and blood stasis, and cold clotting and blood stasis, leaving behind posterior neuralgia.
5.Clinical manifestations of herpes zoster
(1) Systemic symptoms
Some patients have cold symptoms in the early stage, and before the onset of the rash, there may be mild weakness, low fever, poor nausea and other systemic symptoms.
(2) Local symptoms
At the onset of the disease, the affected area of the skin feels a burning sensation or neuralgia, and there is obvious pain sensitivity to touch, which lasts for 1~3 days, or the rash may develop without antecedent symptoms. The affected area often first appears as a flushed spot, and soon a corn to soybean-sized papule appears, distributed in clusters without fusion, followed by rapid transformation into a blister with a tense, shiny wall and clarified fluid, surrounded by a red halo, with normal skin between the clusters of blisters; the lesions are arranged in a band along a peripheral nerve, occurring on one side of the body and generally not exceeding the midline.
(3) Pain
Neuralgia is one of the characteristics of the disease and can occur before the onset, along with the lesions or after the lesions have subsided, and is often more intense in older patients. The duration of the disease is usually 2~3 weeks, and 3~4 weeks in the elderly. In some patients, posterior neuralgia often remains after the blisters have resolved, especially in the elderly and frail.
(4) Onset site
The preferred sites are intercostal nerve, cervical nerve, trigeminal nerve and lumbosacral nerve innervation area in order.