People with an outbreak of herpes in eyes at increased risk of cerebrovascular accident (CVA) years later, according to a new study.
Shingles is a painful condition that occurs by reactivation of the chickenpox virus (varicella zoster), which remains dormant in nerve fibers after rash illness.
Some people, including over 50 years and those with compromised immune systems, are at high risk for developing viral reactivation and herpes zoster.
The disorder begins with pain or itching burning somewhere in the body and causes an outbreak of blisters. Between 10 and 20 percent of cases develop in the skin around the eyes and sometimes in the same eyes.
Now a team in Taiwan found that in a group of adults with and without ophthalmic herpes, those who had had the infection were more likely to suffer a stroke the year after the treatment.
The 8 percent of 658 men and women with the infection suffered a stroke during the study, in contrast to less than 2 percent of 1974 patients without herpes.
Then, the team considered several factors that explain the high incidence of stroke, such as age and chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes and heart disease. The ophthalmic herpes quadrupled the risk of stroke.
The findings, published in the journal Neurology, did not prove cause ACV ophthalmic herpes in some people. But reinforcing the association between herpes and the risk of having one of these episodes.
Recently, the same researchers found that patients had been treated for any type of herpes had a slightly higher rate of stroke in a year than a control group of similar age (1.7 versus 1.3 percent).
The relationship was particularly strong among those who had ophthalmic herpes.
For them, the important thing is to do everything possible to reduce the risk of having a stroke, told Reuters Health the study’s lead author, Dr. Jau-Der Ho of the Taipei Medical University.
That said, includes not smoking, controlling blood pressure and, in diabetics, the blood sugar level.
But according to an editorial published alongside the study, the researchers stressed that more research is needed before drawing conclusions.
The main limitation of this work is to be conducted based on reviewing medical records, wrote Dr. Gustavo A. Ortiz, a neurologist at the Medical School of the University of Miami.
The team used a national database to identify 658 adults treated for herpes eye and compared each with three patients at random and without herpes the same age and gender.
Such studies can only identify relationships between two variables, such as herpes and risk of stroke, not whether a cause to another.
The study also lacked key information on patients, said Ortiz, ie as if they smoked or had atrial fibrillation, a cardiac arrhythmia that can cause a stroke.