Tuesday, February 01, 2011 ROCHESTER, Minn. — For decades,
medical wisdom about shingles has been that it's a once-in-a-
lifetime experience. The commonly-held belief is that patients
are protected from a recurrence of the herpes zoster virus,
which causes shingles, after one episode. But according to a
study published in the February issue of Mayo Clinic
Proceedings, recurrences of shingles may be significantly more
common than doctors have suspected. "It's been thought that
recurrences were limited to people with compromised immune
systems, for instance from chemotherapy or bloodborne
malignancies, but this is not the case," says lead author
Barbara Yawn, M.D., director of research at Olmsted Medical
Center in Rochester. "Recurrence was prevalent in the
immunocompetent population. We were very surprised by the
results." The research team examined medical records, dating
from 1996 to 2001, of nearly 1,700 patients over age 22 who had
a documented episode of shingles. The condition causes a
specific type of sk