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My daughter is in the contageous stages of chicken pox and I'm meant to be visiting my grandparents this afternoon. They are concerned that they might catch Shingles. Is this something that can actually happen?
The answer is NO. If you have had chicken pox as a child then you are immune to re-Infection. However, you can develop shingles simply because you have had a prior infection with chicken pox as a child. The fact that you are exposed will not mean that you will get shingles, but that Doesn't mean that you can't get shingles. it would just be a very unlikely coincidence.
That is a great question by-the-way.
Also, note that people who have had chicken pox as a child can develop multiple episodes of shingles due to the dormancy of the virus in the nerves in a single dermatome. Re-infection due to re-exposure would not explain why people who get repeated episodes of shingles have the distribution within the same dermatome (look this up), because the virus does not 'know' to go to the same place everytime. However, a dormant virus in nerve endings explains this. Shingles can come about due to stress, among other things and is not too much unlike a dormant Herpes virus.
MD.
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