Introduction: Latent infections

Latent infections: Various infectious diseases cause latent infections, where there is the "potential" to get symptoms, and become infected, but the person has not yet. Examples are latent TB and latent syphilis. The symptom-free stage of HIV prior to AIDS is sometimes called latent HIV. See also carrier conditions for other conditions where a person can be a "carrier" of an infectious disease (or genetic disease) without actually having symptoms. See also the full list of conditions having no symptoms or only mild symptoms for other conditions that might have latent stages.

Latent infections: Latent infections are "hidden" or "silent" and may or may not cause symptoms again after the initial acute episode. Some infectious microbes, usually viruses, can "wake up" and become active again, sometimes off and on for months or years, and cause symptoms. When active, these microbes can be transmitted to other people. Herpes simplex viruses, which cause genital herpes and common cold sores, can remain latent in nerve cells for short or long periods of time, or forever.

Chickenpox is another example of a latent infection. Before the chickenpox vaccine became available in the 1990s, most children in the United States got chickenpox. After the first acute episode, usually when children are very young, the Varicella zoster virus goes into hiding in the body. In many people, it emerges many years later when they are older adults and causes a painful disease of the nerves called herpes zoster, or shingles.¹

Conditions list: The list of conditions in the Latent infections group includes:

• Latent TB - a non-symptomatic infection with tuberculosis
• Latent syphilis (type of Syphilis) - the stage of syphilis prior to getting tertiary syphilis
• Latent HIV - the stage of HIV prior to become symptomatic AIDS

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