What Can I Catch From Shingles

The virus that causes chickenpox can also cause shingles a painful neurological condition with a variety of uncomfortable symptoms.

What can i catch from shingles.

It can take up to 4 weeks for the rash to heal. The virus that causes shingles varicella zoster virus vzv can spread from a person with active shingles and cause chickenpox in someone who had never had chickenpox or received chickenpox vaccine. Shingles is a viral infection that causes a painful rash. If a person who has never had chickenpox makes direct contact with an open blister or something with the fluid on it they can contract the virus and develop chickenpox.

People usually recover from shingles in a few weeks to a few months but the pain of an angry inflamed nerve can linger occasionally as long as six months to a couple of years dr. Stay away from certain groups of people if you have shingles. The blisters that form contain live virus. Vzv spreads through direct contact with fluid from the rash blisters.

How long shingles lasts. Shingles is caused by the varicella zoster virus the same virus that causes chickenpox. You can t spread the condition to another person. Most people who develop shingles have only one episode during their lifetime.

However you can catch chickenpox from someone with shingles if you haven t had chickenpox before. Shingles itself is not contagious. After you have that childhood disease the virus stays dormant in your body and can reemerge decades later to cause shingles. But people who have not had chickenpox before could catch chickenpox from you.

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. So you get shingles from your own chickenpox virus not from someone else. Shingles are caused by the chickenpox virus which has been dormant staying quiet in your body ever since you had chickenpox. However you can not catch shingles itself from someone else.

Shingles characterized by a painful blistering rash on one side of the body usually the torso is caused by the same herpes virus varicella zoster that causes chickenpox. Though people who haven t had chickenpox can catch that condition from you the shingles itself isn t contagious. No you can t catch shingles from anybody. Shingles is a condition caused by the varicella zoster virus the same virus that causes chickenpox.

Getting vaccinated can help prevent shingles.