So let me help educate you and reduce you promulgating bad information. Varicella Zoster is NOT a reinfection as you state, the fact is that Varicella takes up a position in the Dorsal Root Ganglion (DRG) of the spinal column where sensory neurons live. This is a region of the body that is considered immunosequestered which means that the immune system does not cross into this region. When a patient gets Shingles, it is because of a immunosuppressed state that causes the rash to activate down a nerve root dermatome. This is exactly why Shingles can be traced to a region of the body and never crosses the midline (except in the rarest case of disseminated shingles when the immune system is completely obliterated)
Thus, while you do shed active varicella and primary chicken pox CAN be transmitted from the shingles, the shingles IS NOT a reinfection of the same virus, it is a loss of surveillance in the body which causes the process.
Thanks doctor. My doctor husband became a better doctor when he had a patient with bilateral shingles.
Ever after he was skeptical about the hooves approach.
Varicella Zoster is NOT a reinfection as you state . . .
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I never said it was a “reinfection.” I said it is the same virus that you get once and it never leaves your body, which is exactly what you said. Don’t call the virus a “rash” that activates down a nerve, call it what it is the same Varicelal Zoster virus that comes out of its hiding place in the Ganglion, travels down a nerve and in my case permanently destroyed the nerves in my right face. I didn’t catch it a second time and I wasn’t reinfected, it was there all the time. It was the one and only virus that will never leave me til death do us part, much to my chagrin!