can i get shingles if i've never had chickenpox?
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This is a bit of a trick question. You can only get shingles if you've already had chickenpox. Shingles can develop in anyone who has had chickenpox. If you haven't had chickenpox but are exposed to someone with chickenpox or shingles, regardless of your age, you will develop chickenpox first.
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Shingles, also known as zoster or herpes zoster, is a painful skin rash caused by the same virus responsible for chicken pox: the varicella zoster virus. Even if you had chicken pox in the past, you can still contract shingles.
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Transmission. Anyone who has had chickenpox in the past can develop shingles; even children can get shingles. Shingles cannot be passed from one person to another.
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Most people who have had chickenpox will be immune to the disease for the rest of their lives. However, the virus remains inactive in nerve tissue and may reactivate later in life causing shingles. Very rarely, a second case of chickenpox does happen.
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You can only get shingles if you've already had chickenpox. Shingles can develop in anyone who has had chickenpox.
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The main risk factor for getting shingles is having had chickenpox, although people who have gotten the chickenpox vaccine may still be at risk. Another risk factor is age. Children, teenagers, and young adults can get shingles, but most people who have outbreaks, are over 50 years old.
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Although chickenpox vaccines do contain a weakened version of the live virus, which can reactivate later in life and cause shingles, this is very rare, he said. "Nearly 99 percent of children who receive the vaccine will not get chickenpox at all," Schaffner told Live Science.
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VZV spreads through direct contact with fluid from the rash blisters. Most people who develop shingles have only one episode during their lifetime. However, you can get the disease more than once. A person with active shingles can spread the virus when the rash is in the blister-phase.
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Even if you had chicken pox in the past, you can still contract shingles. That's because the chicken-pox virus remains in the body, lying dormant in the roots of nerves, and can reactivate many years later.
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It is safe to be around infants and young children, pregnant women, or people with weakened immune systems after you get the shingles vaccine. There is no documentation of a person getting chickenpox from someone who has received the shingles vaccine (which contains varicella zoster virus).
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Shingles Virus. Shingles is an illness that can produce fever, headaches, rashes, joint pain, muscle pain, neck pain, nerve pain, and other highly unpleasant symptoms. Typically, a shingles diagnosis is never made if no rash is present.
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It's caused by nerve damage left behind by a case of shingles. Shingles itself comes from reactivation of a chickenpox virus, varicella zoster. The virus travels down nerve fibers to cause a painful skin rash. When the rash goes away, the pain usually goes with it.
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Shingles occurs in people who have already had chickenpox, usually many years later. Shingles is very contagious. You can catch chickenpox from someone with shingles through contact with their secretions or their skin rash.
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Although shingles can occur anywhere on your body, it most often appears as a single stripe of blisters that wraps around either the left or the right side of your torso. Shingles is caused by the varicella-zoster virus — the same virus that causes chickenpox.
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It shows your level of chickenpox immunity. But if you're 50 or older, you can and should get the new shingles vaccine, Shingrix, whether or not you remember getting chickenpox in childhood.
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There is no documentation of a person getting chickenpox from someone who has received the shingles vaccine (which contains varicella zoster virus). Some people who get the shingles vaccine will develop a chickenpox-like rash near the place where they were vaccinated.
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If you haven't had chickenpox, you can't get shingles—but that doesn't mean that contact with shingles won't get you sick. If you are over the age of 50, and have had chickenpox, consider the Zostavax vaccine and call the professionals at Northeast Dermatology Associates.