Acute Demyelinating Disease Complicating Herpes Zoster

Judging by the literature on the subject of the central nervous complications of herpes zoster, demyelination seems rare as a sequel. Up till 1945 Gordon and Tucker could find no recorded case in the few necropsy reports on encephalitis or myelitis complicating this infection. Nor have we been able to trace any proven case in the recent literature. This seems all the more remarkable since an early stage of a perivenous demyelinating encephalomyelitis is by no means a rare complication of varicella (Miller, Stanton, and Gibbons, 1956).