Brief Answer: Kindly provide important details Detailed Answer: Hello, Welcome and thanks for posting your query to healthcare magic. I can understand your concern for the skin rash over different parts of your body. There can be multiple of possibilities of rash. The history provided is too brief to reach to any conclusive point. I request you to please kindly elaborate your query in detail so that I can help you best regarding the health issues. Kindly elaborate the problem in terms of - - Is the itching present continuously since its occurrence from last night or has faded a little. - Is there any itching or pain present on the rash. If present then is it mild/moderate or severe. - Is it present only on one side of body. - Any kind of eruptions or any bumps you felt along with the rash. If yes then can you send a picture of that area so that I can analyze it better. For that you have a feature to upload images by yourself at the right side of the query page. Or else, you can send as an attachment to YYYY@YYYY with the subject as "Attn: Dr. Sanjay Kumar Kanodia. Hope to hear you soon from your side to help and guide you best. With good health wishes, Dr Sanjay Kumar Kanodia MD- Dermatology

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Brief Answer: The condition is simple urticaria Detailed Answer: Hello, Welcome again to the forum and thanks for posting important details. After reading the complete query I can make out that your problem is not at all herpes zoster or shingles. The condition is simple acute urticaria or also known as hives. To tell you Medically - Our blood contains multiple type cells including red blood cells and white blood cells. Specifically these white blood cells provide immunity to our body which are of further multiple types. Whenever anything in body is not suitable or offending to body then the number of white blood cells increases transiently. Particularly these cells which increase are eosinophils and basophils which are also known as mast cells. These cells contain granules which have a specific chemical known as histamine. So as soon as any offending factors come in contact there is bursting of the mast cells. There fore this histamine is released and we experience variable degree of itching and the kind of rashes which occurred in yourself. The rash can remain for a very transient period to upto multiple hours. It can remain for more than 12 hours too depending on the intensity of the offending factor but never more than 24 hours. Now the type of offending factor are innumerable including our food, environmental factors including temperature variation, heat, humidity, cold, dust and even simple of fragrances in air and multiple of other related things. For the treatment part - it is quite simple and treated with drugs which inhibits the histamine release also known as Antihistamines. Benadryl is a good drug and can be taken for up to 4 times a day. The only problem is sedation with benadryl. If you are comfortable with the sedation part then you can continue the same. In my patients I start with loratadine as it is very simple medicine without any side effects of sedation. It can be take foe 2-3 tablets/day. In general acute urticaria may remain for few day to weeks. In most of the cases as our immune system and body get adjusted to that particular offending factor so it then self subsides. You do not worry about the possibility of shingles as it occurs for only once in life and that too only at a particular one side of the body and never as generalized rash. I hope these information will help you in dealing the condition better. If you have any further queries I will be glad to help you. With good health wishes, Dr Sanjay MD - Dermatology

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