Most patients are interested if the shingles is contagious. The answer is direct and simple - yes it is. More often than not it is passed from the ill people to the healthy ones (both children and adults), who haven't got chicken-pox before. Having contacted with the virus carries you dispose yourself to catching difficult herpes or varicella infection.
Who and how catches shingles?
As a rule the disease starts with a fever and neuralgic type of pain. Simultaneously general weakness, nausea and vomiting can appear. The reservoir of the infection is mostly the mucous membrane of the gullet and tonsils, from where the contagious virus under the influence of different circumstances (cold, injury others) gets into the blood and selectively hurts the nervous system and skin.
The treatment is the same as with the common herpes. Patients are prohibited to take a bath or shower. To avoid the contagious spreading the ill people have to be isolated, especially from children. The infection, caught in the infants' body triggers the chicken-pox. Those who contacted the shingles ill people are quarantined for 21 days. By the way, adults having contacted children with chicken-pox can catch shingles. In the end everything leads to it. Because for people, who had varicella in childhood, chicken-pox is not infectious anymore.
Shingles pain
Shingles treatment
Shingles contagious period
The most dangerous moment for the healthy friends and relatives and those who surround the patient is the time when the eruption appears. Only after all the blisters on the body get dry and solid, the virus is not contagious anymore. Thus, the disease will not be spreading.
Herpes zoster contagious
Herpes zoster shingles
Herpes zoster vaccine
Shingles contagious in women
This herpetic infection usually hurts the nervous system, that's why the first symptom of this virus is attack-like pain or continuing pain, which appears in any part of the body, and usually gets stronger at night. Ache intensity depends on the level of the nerve damage. However, in this period the rash is still absent and it is rather difficult to set the correct diagnosis. With the flow of the disease development new more distinct shingles symptoms emerge. Yet, the rash can appear several days later or does not appear at all - but that is in very rare cases. Usually the eruption appears within 24 hours after the pain. It starts with the reddish spots, which grow into numerous small watery blisters which fluid contains contagious virus. They are grouped along the route of the infected nerved. Several days later the rash begins to get dry and disappear, but the pain remains for months or even a year. The described illness is also accompanied by characteristic numbness and tingling in the hurt zone.
Shingles symptoms in women
Shingles symptoms in men
Shingles contagious in men
Thus, from the above mentioned it can be stated that the most dangerous period of contamination is the eruption stage, when the new blisters appear, and person can catch the chicken-pox (not the shingles) if he haven't had it before. Having had the chicken-pox earlier one can never catch herpetic virus zoster from anyone else. But those people have the potential risk of shingles development in future. When the rash stops emerging and blisters get drier the patient is no longer contagious. Even when the eruption is still in progress, there is little probability, that the virus will be caught by the visitor. If the patients feel well enough, and the pain is not strong, they can to work. They just have to follow several simple rules, to avoid contamination of other people: do not use the common towel, do not swim in the swimming pool or play games with body contacts (fighting, rugby).
However there is a rule that pregnant women and people with weak immune system, having no chicken-pox earlier are to avoid any contacts with the herpes infected, what is not contagious for others can hurt them.