Pregabalin, the drug most commonly used to treat shingles, has now been shown to reduce the pain of patients with spinal cord injury.
The study, reported in the Neurology, examined 137 adult spinal cord injury patients. The control group received placebo, while the other group received pregabalin.
If you've ever had the chicken pox, you can also get shingles. Shingles is caused by a localized infection due to the varicella-zoster virus, the same virus that causes chickenpox.
Shingles only occurs in people who have had chicken pox in the past, and is believed to represent a reactivation of the dormant varicella virus. Sometimes, emotional stress can cause the reactivation, but the exact reasons or mechanism for this is not known.
