I am Tibor Bakacs, a medical doctor, the Chief Scientific Officer of HepC Inc that develops the paradigm changing IBDV superinfection antiviral therapy. Below I described my own shingles for fellow herpes zoster patients how I experienced this disease being the patient and doctor, respectively. Importantly, in shingles there is no need for sophisticated instruments to measure the efficacy of treatment because the crustation of vesicles can be seen by the naked eye.

Shingles (herpes zoster) is a viral infection which causes a painful rash. Shingles could occur anywhere on the body. Typically, it looks like a single stripe of blisters that wraps around the left or right side of the body. Shingles is caused by the varicella-zoster virus — the same virus that causes chickenpox. After a child had chickenpox, the virus stays dormant in the nerve cells of the body for the rest of the patient’s life. Decades after chickenpox, as varicella-specific host immunity declines with age, the virus may reactivate spontaneously anywhere on the body. In such time, the virus travels via the nerve cells to the nerve terminals in the skin, which is characterized by pain, rash and vesicles distributed along a given nerve.

I had chickenpox at age 9. My shingles episode occurred in 2021, when I was 75 years old. I never had shingles before and ever since. I was in good physical condition as I do regular physical exercise 6 times a week. I do not take drugs regularly as I have no chronic disease. The virus was probably reactivated by an hour-long tooth extraction three days before the first symptoms occurred. The first symptoms were quite atypical. I had a few tingling and itching rash at the left side on the top of my head. Within a few days, however, the rash became painful and spread to my left face including the area around the eye, including the upper eyelid.

By this time, many erythematous papules appeared, which developed into vesicles that began to pustulate and became ulcerated. I felt throbbing pain on the entire left side of my head. The pain was tolerable but it persisted through all stages of my shingles. I also had malaise and fever.

Due to the atypical mild early syndromes, I started conventional acyclovir treatment belatedly. When the rash and vesicles covered half of my face, which became swollen and very painful, I realized that I had a severe shingles that threatened my vision. Such widespread shingles is very rare unless the immune system of the patient is compromised. Acyclovir is not very effective in older patients, particularly if treatment was started belatedly (as in my case 72 hours after of the first symptoms). Therefore, I decided to complement acyclovir with our experimental IBDV therapy, which has already been tested in more than fifty patients with various viral diseases. I have not tested IBDV on myself, neither against herpes viruses. Notwithstanding, I was confident because IBDV has a very strong immunostimulatory power as it activates the natural antiviral interferon (IFN) defense system of host cells. IBDV is capable to suppress replication of many viruses, while it has no significant side effect.

I have used a commercially available avian IBDV vaccine virus for treatment. The edema around my eye rapidly decreased. During just four days, the rash almost completely subsided and crusting of the ulcerated vesicle started. Important to note that conventional acyclovir treatment requires 15 days on average to cure shingles. I restarted IBDV treatment for seven days in order to mitigate my pain (post herpetic neuralgia), which is observed in well over 50% of patients with shingles and can be severe and long-lasting (several months to more than a year). My pain, however, subsided within a month. The only adverse event of IBDV was a slight rise in temperature (up to 37.5 C) for a day following the administration of IBDV, which has been reported in other patients as well.

In my conclusion as a patient and medical doctor, oral IBDV treatment was safe and effective in a severe shingles which threatened my eyesight.