Posts Misrepresent Shingles Cases as Monkeypox

Misbar has investigated the claim and found it to be fake. Monkeypox and shingles are not the same disease. The two infections are caused by viruses from different categories. According to scientific and laboratory testing, the two viruses are unlikely to be confused.

What Is Shingles?

Shingles, also known as herpes zoster, is defined as "a painful rash that develops on one side of the face or body." The rash consists of blisters that scab over in 7 to 10 days and clear up completely in 2 to 4 weeks." The reactivation of the dormant Varicella Zoster Virus, which also causes chickenpox, causes it. It belongs to the Herpensviruses family, as opposed to Monkeypox, which belongs to the Poxviruses family.

The virus remains dormant (inactive) in the body after a person recovers from chickenpox, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The virus can reactivate later in life, resulting in shingles.

Scientific studies have revealed that the two viruses cause distinct rashes and symptoms.

What Is Monkeypox?

Poxviruses include monkeypox, which is a distant relative of smallpox. It was discovered in 1958 after two outbreaks of a pox-like disease in research colonies of monkeys. The first human case of monkeypox was discovered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970.

Human cases of monkeypox were later reported in other Central and Western African countries.

Monkeypox is a zoonosis, which means that it is transmitted to humans primarily by animals.

Direct contact with a person infected with the active virus can also help spread the disease.

Lymph nodes swell as a result of monkeypox. Monkeypox lesions are also not limited to one area of the body, unlike Shingles disease, which affects only a small area of skin.

Monkeypox is spread from person to person through close contact. "This virus transmits via respiratory droplets, which necessitates prolonged face-to-face or close contact with another individual – this is very different from COVID-19," Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee, told Healthline.

According to our findings, the risk of Monkeypox is primarily associated with contact with infected animals or people carrying the active virus. Meanwhile, Shingles can develop following the activation of the dormant Varicella Zoster Virus, which also causes chickenpox.