Abstract
A statistical survey was performed on 276 Japanese patients with herpes zoster, who visited the dermatological division of Sasebo City General Hospital from January 1999 to December 2000. These 276 cases (119 males and 157 females) accounted for 4.1% of all new outpatients. Their age distribution showed two peaks: one in the sixties and one in the twenties. The most frequently involved site was the thorax (28.3%) followed by the head and neck (27.5%) and the abdomen (25.0%). The mean duration from the onset to the first examination was 6.0 days. About seventy-seven percent of the patients had an underlying disease such as a malignant neoplasm, hypertension or diabetes mellitus. Furthermore, 55.8% of all patients, and 81.0% of cases in their twenties, experienced tiredness within three weeks before onset. The mean duration of skin eruptions was 18.4 days, and that of pain was 39.0 days. Both of these durations were significantly shorter in the patients who had begun taking acyclovir within 3 days after onset than in patients who had begun acyclovir later than that. The efficacy of pain medicines was 81.6% for prednisolone, 80.3% for amitriptyline, 76.8% for Sairei-to, and 52.6% for ethyl loflazepate. The percentage of patients responding to topical treatment for skin eruptions was 93.2% for tretinoin tocopheril and 83.3% for suprofen. Recurrent attacks occurred in 22 cases (8.0%).
