Shingles are caused when a virus known as varicella-zoster is reactivated.  The varicella zoster is the herpes virus that caused a person to experience chickenpox.  Once you have had this herpes virus, chickenpox, this virus will continue to inactively lie within the nerve roots, remaining inactive, and then it will cause an outbreak again.  Once the outbreak is caused again, you will experience shingles, not chickenpox.

Every person that has been exposed to chickenpox could have a flare up of shingles.  Anyone that has a very weak immune system is at risk of this virus reactivating causing shingles.  There are numerous factors that might weaken a person’s immune system, such as illness, injury, or aging.  However, some medications can weaken your immune system as well.  For example, chemotherapy helps to destroy those cancer cells, but at the same time is interfering with an individual’s immune system.

An individual cannot have shingles just because they had been exposed to them.  Nevertheless, if you never had the chickenpox, or the vaccine, you might get the chickenpox by being exposed to the person with shingles.  The only way that this could happen is if the person has blisters and the fluid is not bandaged up, it can be spread.