What medicine to take for herpes zoster? 4 steps to teach you how to correctly treat herpes zoster

Shingles is a common skin disease in daily life and is highly contagious. Therefore, it is very important to receive early treatment after the onset of the disease. So what medicine is better for treating shingles? Let’s take a look at it together below!

The herpes zoster virus is also called varicella-zoster virus. Humans are the only host of this virus and it exists in the normal human body. When the body is subjected to some kind of stimulation (such as trauma, fatigue, malignant tumors, or weakness after illness, etc.) that causes the body's resistance to decrease, the latent virus is activated and travels down along the axons of the sensory nerves to the skin of the area controlled by the nerves, where it replicates and produces blisters. At the same time, the affected nerves become inflamed and necrotic, causing neuralgia. The disease that occurs in infants and young children is called chickenpox, and the disease that occurs in adults is called shingles. Generally, regular and adequate courses of antiviral, nerve nutrition, and analgesic treatment are required after the onset of the disease. Skin damage can heal itself after 1-2 weeks. Analgesic treatment during the shingles period needs to be improved to avoid prolonging the disease and turning it into postherpetic neuralgia. Postherpetic neuralgia is a type of intractable neuropathic pain that is relatively complicated to treat.

What medicine to take for herpes zoster

1. General principles of herpes zoster: antiviral, reduce pain, prevent secondary infection, and shorten the course of the disease.

①Neuralgia: Analgesics such as aspirin, acetaminophen, indomethacin, ibuprofen, Xinhuang tablets, etc. can be given. Postherpetic neuralgia requires the combined use of analgesics and sedatives, such as doxepin 25 mg, taken orally 3 times a day; cimetidine 0.2 g, dexamethasone 1.5 mg, cyproheptadine 2 mg, taken orally 3 times a day, and vitamin B12 100 micrograms, injected intramuscularly once a day, for a total of 10 days.

② Local skin care treatment: Apply phthalamide ointment or calamine lotion externally, 3-5 times a day. For erosion, apply 2% gentian violet solution or neomycin furfural oil paste. Or ultraviolet irradiation, audio frequency electrotherapy, laser irradiation (helium-neon or carbon dioxide expanded beam irradiation), TDP spectrum irradiation, etc.

③ Herpes zoster in the eye: Herpes zoster or acyclovir can be used as eye drops, and atropine can be used to dilate the pupil to prevent corneal adhesion;

2. Antiviral treatment, mainly used for patients with immunodeficiency or immunosuppression, adenosine or acyclovir. Oral highly effective antiviral drugs: acyclovir, valacyclovir, etc. (Clinical tips: acyclovir is ineffective for the treatment of postherpetic neuralgia) Apply topical acyclovir eye drops to the affected area. You can take antibiotics orally or apply erythromycin ointment to the affected area. If the blisters rupture, apply 2.5% gentian violet solution to the affected area. Corticosteroids: Use with caution in the short term!

3. For patients who are currently using cytotoxic drugs, immunosuppressants or metabolic antagonists, the dosage should be reduced or the drugs should be discontinued as they are prone to virus spread.

4. It can be combined with heat-clearing and detoxifying Chinese medicine and acupuncture therapy. Recommended Chinese patent medicines include Longdan Xiegan Pills for those with excessive liver fire; Weiling Pills or Shenling Baizhu Pills for those with spleen deficiency and dampness; Xuefu Zhuyu Pills for those with qi and blood stasis.