In Reply.—
We would like to thank Drs Berger, Mills, and Jacobson for their interesting comments.We think that their patients with chronic varicella zoster virus infection are different from the two patients we described with cytomeglovirus infection. Clinically, the lesions of their patients are in a zosteriform distribution. Their histopathologic findings, limited to the epidermis, are related to a varicella zoster virus resistant to acyclovir.Our first patient previously had anal herpetic lesions, with viral cultures positive for herpes simplex virus 2, which responded to a 5-day course of oral acyclovir, without relapse. He never received ganciclovir. He had only one verrucous lesion on the heel, with histopathologic changes characteristic of cytomegalovirus infection.The second patient had varicella 2 years previously, and 1 year later, intercostal herpes zoster culture-proved lesions, without cutaneous or visceral dissemination. The lesions healed spontaneously and he never received acyclovir or ganciclovir; he never had