HERPES ZOSTER IN THE NEWBORN: REPORT OF ITS OCCURRENCE IN A THREE DAY OLD INFANT

Herpes zoster, a disease frequently encountered in adults, is much less often seen in children and is extremely rare in infancy. Lang, 1 in a review of 10,000 cases observed at the dermatologic clinic of the University of Vienna and a great number of additional cases gathered from the literature, reported in 1938 that the highest figure for incidence in infants was less than 0.07 per cent of all cases of herpes zoster. If patients seen in the first months of life alone are considered, this figure is still lower. During the course of forty years Comby 2 observed 84 cases of herpes zoster in children. Nine of the patients were in the first two years of life, the youngest an infant of 8 months. Gaehde 3 in 1897 reported a case of herpes zoster in a 3 week old infant of an eclamptic mother. Bonar and Pearsall 4 in