Evaluation of demographic and clinical characteristics of 166 patients with herpes zoster in the Kirsehir region

Abstract

Background and Design: Herpes zoster (HZ) occurs by reactivation of the latent varicella zoster virus at dorsal root ganglia. In the literature, there are studies on socio-demographic and clinical characteristics of patients with HZ in our country and in the world, however, there has been no study performed in our region. We aimed to evaluate demographic and clinical characteristics of patients with HZ and to investigate differences and similarities with other epidemiological studies in Turkey and in the world. Materials and Methods: One hundred sixty-six patients clinically diagnosed with HZ by dermatologists between January 2015 and December 2016 and were followed for 3 months in terms of possible complications were included this study. Demographic and clinical characteristics of the patients were recorded. Results: The mean age of the patients was 51.48 +/- 21.05 (1-90) years. Eighty-seven patients were female (52.4%), 79 were male (47.6%). Thirteen patients (7.8%) were in the pediatric age group (<18). The frequency of patient admission was highest in December and lowest in March. The most frequent locations of the lesions were thoracic (76 patients, 45.8%) and lumbar (40 patients, 24.1%) regions. The lesions were on the left side of the body in 96 (57.8%) and right side in 70 (42.2%) patients. The most frequent triggering factor was emotional stress. Post-herpetic neuralgia (27.7%) was the most frequently seen complication. The most common systemic comorbidity was hypertension. Malignancy was present in only 3 patients (1.8%). Conclusion: Our data were highly comparable with other studies. However, occurrence of HZ mostly during the winter and in the left side of the body was the difference from other studies. We conclude that further country-wide studies with larger number of patients are needed in order to clarify the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of HZ in our country.