• piecat@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Doesn’t chickenpox turn into shingles by infecting the nervous system?

    Could long covid be related to that?

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      The virus that causes chicken pox, lies dormant in your nervous system, where your immune system can’t get it, for decades. Then much later in life the virus can reactivate, infect along those nerves, causing shingles.

      This is the important part of the chicken pox vaccination the we don’t talk about nearly enough.

      • If you get chicken pox, you’ll probably be ok (although not everyone is) and get over it, becoming immune. But the virus will still lurk, opening you to shingles attacks when you’re much older
      • if you get the vaccination, you’ll probably not only not get chicken pox, but will also not get shingles

      Supposedly something like one in three elderly will get shingles, when they can’t as easily deal with it. As current generation gets old, that illness will practically disappear

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        the varicella vaccine prevents severe infections, but its not entirely protective against it, it just makes you asymptomatic, and once you get reinfected it can still become dormant, and get hsingles, just less chances of getting it.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      different issues. varicella can cause shingles, when it travels to your dorsal root ganglia near your spine or the ganglia in your head,or rarely it can become dormant in your autonomic nervous system.

      varicella, a herpes isnt the same thing as coronavirus. long covid is just laymen terms for complications or sequalae. Covid can trigger shingles, because your immune system is fighting the covid virus instead of shingles.