I am curious if anyone here has had shingles before they were diagnosed with MS. or after wards. Is there any theroy linking the two??

I haven't heard any theory linking the two but my mom said I had shingles when I was about 9 yrs old.

I had them after my first go around with IV steroids too.

Yep, it's that old herpes 6 link again. DD had shingles before she
was DXed and I had shingles after I was DXed. I think there is a link.

I had shingles about 5 years ago. Before dx, but after I had other ms sx.
I had them on my arm after I had fallen and landed on that same arm.

I had shingles either just before or at the same time that I had mononucleosis in late 1995/early 1996. (I was sick for months!)

My first possible MS symptom (not sure if it was really an MS symptom, but it's likely it was) was vertigo. I started getting vertigo sometime in the summer of 1997. Thought it was an ear infection...it still could have been an ear infection, and the infection could be what caused the vertigo, or the infection could have caused a small exacerbation that could have been causing the vertigo...did that make sense?

I had those "ear infections" a lot after that first time. (at least 3 times or more a year)

I wonder if Chicken Pox is what primes your system for the MS, and then having Shingles (which is a reactivation of Chicken Pox) sometime before or after having mononucleosis is what triggers it??

Some people can get Mononucleosis (Cytomegalovirus or Epstein-Barr Virus) and never know that they had it...they might think it was a bad flu or a really bad cold.

I think that I caught mononucleosis and that made my immune system weak and the shingles popped up (bad pun) for a visit. I think I had mono for at least a month before it made me drop into bed for another month or two. Took me a long time to recover from the mono (nearly a year...I had to be careful for at least 6 months just in case of a spleen or liver rupture). The shingles hit me about a month before I was forced to lay in bed for so long.

I have a few suspicions that my MS could have started when I was a child (maybe when I was a 'tween), but I am fairly positive that the MS started to become truly active around the time I had mono, or just after that. If I didnt have it as a child, I know it had to have started about 1997.

I think my first (unconfirmed) symptoms were the many episodes of vertigo that I've had since 1997. (I'd get vertigo for a few days to a few weeks about 2 or 3 times a year, sometimes more often) and the other symptoms would be the occasional weird numbness that I would have in my fingertips every few months since around 99 or 2000. (the fingertip numbness seemed to always happen on a sunday for some weird reason...strange)

I just know that ever since I had mononucleosis, I've felt like something was not right...like something changed.

A bit of information about Shingles:

http://www.nfid.org/pdf/factsheets/varicellaadult.pdf

Everything I have read, they tend to think that a serious infection is the onset of MS, while it may not show up for years later. The infection throws your immune system into overdrive, and when it has attacked the heck outta what it should be, it turns on healthy cells.

The HHV 6 (usually known as roseola in infants to 2 years old) has been found in about 70% of post mortem MS brains. I am looking into that, because Ozone therapy can destroy that in your body, and they think having that can lead to relapses. My mom thinks I had roseola as a child. I also have scarletina, which is the mild for of scarlet fever, which is a strep. I had that when I was 14 or 15. The doc was surprised because he said that usually only happens in children as well.

I wonder if anyone has noticed that shingles and other things pop up once you go on therapy? It is my understanding that MS is a case of an overactive immune system that eventually attacks one's own myelin. So once you go on immunomodulatory therapy, shingles (which are dormant chicken pox herpes virus) come out from hiding and take over. Thoughts?

I never had any treatment for the shingles I had. I actually never had it confirmed, but I described what it looked and felt like, and had a couple of doctors tell me that it was a classic case of shingles.

I developed mononucleosis during or after the shingles started, so I had those at both time. Ever since I found out about the MS, I've kind of suspected that both viruses had something to do with waking up the MS.

Are you saying that The MS immune system modulator Meds are responsible for Shingles? I doubt it, but those crazy drugs could possibly hurt us, so who knows for sure.

Welcome to NeuroTalk!!

This thread was from April, 2008, but the subject is still current.