In this article, the authors observe the impact that herpes zoster opthalmicus has on patietns in developing dementia. The study was a retrospective cohort study that was conducted using the Taiwan Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2005. The authors narrowed down the database from over a million patients into a sample size of 1,389 patients who had received a first time principle diagnosis code of herpes zoster opthalmicus in either a clinic or hospitals between 2001 to 2008. 437 of the patients were excluded due to age < 40 since there would be a decreased incidence of dementia. The study essentially split up the sample size of 3384 into two groups the experimental group and the control group. This article essentially found that there was a 4.61% chance that patients with herpes zoster opthalmicus developed dementia. While the patients without herpes zoster opthalmicus had a 1.65% of developing dementia. Authors believe that this increased incidence of developing dementia in patients with herpes zoster opthalmicus can be attributed to vasculopathy with damage to cerebral neural cells due to cerebral infarcts in adult. Some of the limitations that this article has and can vary our level of faith we place in this article is that the database utilized does not provide other valuable information such as history of smoking and other factors that can play a role in dementia development. Based on the limited information and quality of evidence that this study provides, other studies need to conducted on treatment of herpes infection and subsequent dementia.

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