Shingles (herpes zoster) is a common viral infection that causes painful skin rashes and can trigger post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN), a form of long-term nerve pain that can persist for years. The English name is derived from the Latin for “girdle”, because the shingles rash most commonly occurs around the torso, although it can also affect the face and eyes, as Garner discovered.
One in three people will get shingles in their lifetime, but the risk increases rapidly for anyone after 50 or with a weakened immune system. The disease is caused by the reactivation of the varicella zoster virus, the same virus that causes chickenpox when it first enters the body. The virus can remain dormant in a person’s nervous system for years until it becomes reactivated—often, but not always, when immunity begins to wane due to factors such as aging, immunosuppressant medications, or acute stress.
Garner, a 73-year-old retired pharmacy administrator from Wales, Britain, thinks stress was a factor in her developing shingles. She was under extreme financial pressure over a large tax bill when one July afternoon she felt a strange tingling sensation on one side of the hairline above her forehead.
Within a few hours, the feeling became intense – causing her severe pain – and began moving from her face to one eye. She recalls, “It was as if hundreds of invisible, tiny hot needles were pricking my scalp and face.”
Doctors advised Garner to take acyclovir, an antiviral drug that can help ease symptoms if taken within 72 hours of the onset of symptoms, and an acyclovir eye cream to protect her eye, as shingles can damage vision and lead to blindness if it affects the eye.
But despite treatment, Garner’s face and eyelids soon became covered in a hot red rash with angry blisters. “I couldn’t do anything to stop this feeling of being tortured by burning needles,” she says. “It was as if my nerves were electrical wires that had been cut and they were fidgeting and sparking.”
Despite ringworm being common, it seems that public perception has only recently begun to understand the seriousness of the condition. A 2025 study by researchers at the University of Bristol, UK, points to inadequate public health messaging and a lack of communication about patient experiences of the disease: “The limited literature about the experience and understanding of shingles suggests that people tend to trivialize it until they experience it themselves,” the researchers concluded.
Many people fail to realize that shingles can have a significant and long-lasting impact on their lives, says Martin Solli, consultant plastic surgeon at Oslo University Hospital in Norway. Soli researches the surgical management of chronic pain, including exploring whether applying fat to the skin can help reduce PHN. In 2022, he led a systematic review that examined how shingles affects patients’ quality of life.
Their meta-analysis of five studies involving 2,519 patients in the US, Europe and China showed that people with severe cases of shingles had quality of life scores 15 percent lower than the norm for physical health and 13 percent lower for mental health. “We were quite surprised that it had such a big impact on quality of life,” he says. “We know that if you have chronic pain, your quality of life is affected, but for a disease that is temporary – and not fatal – it is very unusual to have such an impact.”
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