Shingles will affect one in THREE people reading this in their lifetime right now – so what is the most common ailment to affect Senator Dianne Feinstein?
Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, struck down by a case of shingles earlier this year, has been experiencing more serious health problems than previously known.
Sen. Feinstein, 89 and facing calls to resign from several fellow Democratic legislators and progressive groups in California, returned to Washington after a months-long absence to recover from shingles.
The 50-year veteran of California politics was hospitalized in late February with the common disease, which is caused by the same virus as chickenpox and can lie dormant in the body for years before reactivating in old age.
She had a previously unreported case of encephalitis, a potentially serious condition in which the brain becomes inflamed and swells, causing temporary symptoms such as headaches and fever, as well as long-term damage, including memory or language problems.
The shingles virus has also caused vision and balance problems, as well as Ramsay Hunt syndrome, which leads to facial paralysis, which is typically curable.
The risk of developing shingles increases as you get older. About half of all shingles cases are in adults age 60 or older, and the chances of getting shingles become much higher by age 70
Shingles can appear anywhere on your body. It usually looks like a single stripe of blisters that wraps around the left or right side of your torso. Photos show a patient’s rash on their abdomen, courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
In some cases, the rash occurs on one side of the face, which can affect the eye and cause vision loss. Photo courtesy of the CDC
Shingles causes a painful rash that can appear anywhere on the body and usually looks like a strip or streak of blisters that wraps around the trunk.
About one in three people in the US will get shingles in their lifetime and many will survive. It causes fewer than 100 deaths each year.
But shingles death rates are about 10 times higher among people older than 65 years.
Shingles cannot be passed directly from person to person. Direct contact with someone’s blistered skin rash, which contains particles of the virus, can cause them to contract the varicella-zoster virus and get chickenpox.
The blisters usually wear off within a week to 10 days and disappear completely within a month with the help of antiviral medications. Adults age 50 and older can also be vaccinated against shingles.
Most people who experience severe cases of shingles have a compromised immune system.
Thirty percent of all shingles hospitalizations are in people with weak or compromised immune systems, such as those who have had organ transplants and are taking immunosuppressant medications.
While the rash will heal, shingles can leave severe pain in the nerves and skin where the rash was, a complication known as postherpetic neuralgia (PHN).
Up to 18 percent of people with shingles will experience painful PHN symptoms.
Post-shingles encephalitis, from which the senator has reportedly recovered, can lead to fatigue, irritability, impaired concentration, seizures, hearing loss, memory loss and blindness in the long run.
The encephalitis, as well as her facial paralysis, were caused by the shingles virus.
And when it comes to symptom severity and the recovery process, older patients tend to fare worse.
A study published last year in the journal Annals of Intensive Care found that of 55 critically ill patients with the virus, more than a fifth were significantly disabled one year after admission to intensive care.
While older people often have worse outcomes, doctors can’t say for sure why the virus that causes shingles reactivates later in life. It is possibly due to age-related decline in the immune system.