COLORADO: In a new study, prothrombotic and proinflammatory exosomes have been identified as the mechanism between herpes zoster and stroke.
Dr Tarpley stated that implicating exosomes is a unique and interesting concept but that this issue is quite easily resolved through immunisation.
The study provides an opportunity to raise awareness that shingles, or herpes zoster, increase the risk of stroke and are avoidable. Dr Tarpley is a stroke neurologist and the director of the Pacific Neuroscience Institute's Stroke and Neurovascular Center at Providence Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California. He did not participate in the study.
Previous research has demonstrated that an elevated risk of stroke persists for up to a year after the typical few-week duration of shingles symptoms. This study demonstrates how the higher risk occurs.
Dr Andrew Bubak, an assistant professor at the Anschutz Medical Campus of the University of Colorado Denver, is the study's corresponding author. The study's authors evaluated the blood of 13 individuals with a clinical diagnosis of zoster, including five men and eight women with a mean age of 62,1 years. The control group consisted of ten healthy adults, five males and five females, with an average age of 49.9 years.
The Houston Center for Clinical Studies provided blood samples for the herpes zoster group that were collected within a week of the rash or blisters appearing. At the time, none were receiving antiviral drugs.