Varicella Zoster Virus Research Paper

VARICELLA ZOSTER VIRUS

Varicella Zoster virus (VZV) is the causative organism of Chicken pox. The infection is acute and highly contagious. Apart from people immunized, about 90% of people globally get infected during their childhood by age 20 (Pérez-Farinós et al, 2007). The illness lasts for about 7to 10 days (). …….

The illness starts as fever, general and cold. In some children and adults it starts with rash. The virus is culturable from the mononuclear cells of an infected person 5 days before the rash appears or a day or two after the rash. Spots occur on the body which starts as red itchy lump. Accumulates pus and gets bigger. The fluid from the lump is contagious. It becomes a crust which fall off after about five days. In some people the spots appear all over their body including their head and genitilia.

After recovery from chicken pox, rarely does it reemerge as another episode of chicken pox, but rather stays dormant in the nerve cell especially in the dorsal root ganglion and later in adult life (), usually beyond 50 years cause an infection called shingles or

VZV is designated as human herpesvirus 3. VZV is host specific, as such it infects only human cells. It is composed of 4 parts namely: the envelope, tegument, capsid, and core. The envelope is the outer coat of the virus which is a lipid bilayer, having spiky glycoproteins. These glycoproteins are enable the virus to enter the host cell by serving as receptors for binding. The tegument is the next inner layer after the envelope, composed of another layer of viral proteins. Next is the nucleocapsid, a protein shell. The nucleocapsid contains the DNA of the virus. This capsule is a unique shape, it is a twenty-faced icosahedron. The core is within the nucleocapsid, the lifeline of the virus is the core. Genetic information in the form of a linear double strand of DNA is safely encapsulated, only to be released when infecting a host