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Senior Health Site Adds New Information on Shingles
March 11, 2005 – The latest edition to the senior
health NIHSeniorHealth.gov is a section on Shingles, a major health
problem for many older adults. The site designed especially for easy use
by senior citizens provides new information on how to recognize and
treat the disease.
Each year, 600,000 or more Americans are diagnosed
with shingles, a painful skin disease caused by a reactivation of the
chickenpox virus. Anyone who has had chickenpox is at risk for shingles,
though people over age 50 are at greatest risk.
Effective treatments and prevention have been
limited, but recent research has shown that shingles can be treated if
treatment is started early. Now, information about shingles — how to
recognize it and treat it — is only a mouse click away at
www.nihseniorhealth.gov.
"Shingles is a major health problem in older
adults. Launching this Web topic is an important step toward our goal of
informing older adults about this debilitating disease," says Anthony S.
Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which developed the content for the
shingles topic on the Web site.
"Older Americans can turn to NIHSeniorHealth for
accurate, helpful information about shingles diagnosis, treatment, and
research," he said.
One of the fastest growing age groups using the
Internet, older Americans increasingly turn to the World Wide Web for
health information. In fact, 66 percent of "wired" seniors surf for
health and medical information when they go online. NIHSeniorHealth, a
joint effort of the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the National
Library of Medicine (NLM), was designed especially with seniors in mind.
The site is based on the latest research on
cognition and aging. It features short, easy-to-read segments of
information that can be accessed in a variety of formats, including
various large-print type sizes, open-captioned videos, and even an audio
version.
Additional topics coming soon to the site include
problems with taste and smell, eye diseases, stroke, and osteoporosis.
The site links to MedlinePlus, NLM's premier, more detailed site for
consumer health information.
The NIA leads the Federal effort supporting and
conducting research on aging and the health and well-being of older
people. The NLM, the world's largest library of the health sciences,
creates and sponsors Web-based health information resources for the
public and professionals.
The NIAID supports research to prevent, diagnose,
and treat infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, influenza, and
tuberculosis; transplantation; and immune-related illnesses, including
autoimmune disorders, asthma, and allergies. All three are components of
the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, part of the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
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