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Shingles & Bone Pain

When older individuals experience aches in the body or shooting pain, they sometimes attribute it to bone pain, especially if they suffer from arthritis already. But shingles pain can mimic flu-like and arthritic symptoms--overall aches and throbbing or sharp pain. And when the shingles rash follows the pain, instead of preceding it, it can confuse diagnosis. But there is no bone pain with shingles.

  1. Shingles

    • Shingles is a medical condition that produces pain and blisters. The pain can be just on the skin area or be felt deeply in the body---shooting pain. It is known by several different names (herpes zoster and post herpetic neuralgia), according to the National Institutes of Health, and affects individuals who have had chicken pox previously---usually in their youth. The condition is not contagious, though.

    Cause

    • Generally a bout with chickenpox in youth will leave behind the virus varicella-zoster, even after an individual no longer has chickenpox. The virus lays dormant and does not resurface again in all individuals who previously had chicken pox---only those whose immune system seems to be compromised.

      Therefore, as an individual gets older and begins to suffer from a weaker immune system, the virus can resurface. However, not all older individuals with weak immune systems--who had chicken pox during their youth--will experience shingles, according to the National Institutes of Health.

    Symptom: Pain

    • One of the symptoms of shingles is pain. According to the online website Skinsight.com, the pain caused by shingles can precede the blisters it causes. This is due to the fact that shingles pain is generated through the body's nerve endings; not as a result of the blisters---although the blisters can create their own type of pain.

      The brain sends signals through the spinal column, which consists of many bones in the body and works with many of the body's nerves. As these signals reach the nerve areas affected by shingles, pain is emitted.

    Shingles and Bone Pain

    • Since shingles is the result of nerve ending pain, it does not affect an individual's bones or cause bone pain. However, according to the National Shingles Foundation, shingles symptoms can be so vague at first--flu-like symptoms that include overall aches and pains, as well as numbness and tingling--that it isn't apparent an individual is experiencing shingles. This might lead some to conclude their deep pain is due to other causes, like bone pain.

    Post herpetic neuralgia

    • One of the names that shingles is also known by, post herpetic neuralgia (PHN), is actually more to do with the damage that occurs to nerve endings as a result of shingles. This damage results in sharp, stabbing, throbbing or burning pain experienced months or years after an individual's shingle rash healed up. But like the flu-like symptoms that precede a shingle rash outbreak, this continuing pain after the rash is healed can lead some to wrongly assume that their pain is due to bone pain; not shingles.

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