Abstract

Laith A. Younus, Fadhil A. Nasser

Herpes zoster is a virus that affect aged and those less immunized patients after primarily infection by Varicella zoster virus, it is characterized by skin vesicular eruptions with painful neuralgia in the dermatome distribution. The current therapies are anti-viral as well as analgesics and sympathetic nerve block. However, in some cases, the patients don’t cure rapidly also the pain is persistent and does not respond well to those treatments. so the aim of this study is to give an oral vitamin C which can help those patients to be cured rapidly and to reduce the pain. a cohort study in which 200 patients with Herpes zoster virus have been selected from private dermatologist clinic in Al Najaf Al Ashraf in Iraq that were divided in to two groups: group (A) contain 100 patients after two weeks using normal treatment the doctor added vitamin C supplements 1500 mg/day for a period of two weeks later while group (B) contain 100 patients with normal treatment and do not uses vitamin C supplements, The serum vitamin C was estimated for both groups in different times then following up the patients' health state to show the effect of vitamin C between the two groups in number of patients cured in a detected periods and in reducing the pain. there is a significant differences (P < 0.0001) between the two groups A and B before and after vitamin C supplements, so that the more serum vitamin C concentration the less period for healing with less pain feeling. Vitamin C has an important role to cure the patients with Herpes Zoster rapidly and with less pain than those patients with low vitamin C concentrations.