"I would absolutely recommend that parents immunize their children against chickenpox," he said.įollow Live Science Facebook & Google+. Another complication is an infection of the chickenpox blisters, in which strep bacteria can get into the bloodstream, he said. "A small percentage of children can develop encephalitis, an infection and inflammation of the brain," he said. 3 5 The disease results in a characteristic skin rash that forms small, itchy blisters, which. This can be because of stress, certain conditions, or treatments like chemotherapy. It can be reactivated later and cause shingles if someone's immune system is lowered. When people get chickenpox, the virus remains in the body. "Today's adults who are getting shingles are clearly getting it from the latent chickenpox virus that they acquired as children, and not from the vaccine, which wasn't around when they were young," he said.Īlthough chickenpox results in merely a mild inconvenience for the vast majority of children who get the disease in developed countries such as the United States, there can be serious complications in rare cases, Schaffner said. 6,400 per year (with shingles) 6 Chickenpox, or chicken pox, also known as varicella, is a highly contagious, vaccine-preventable disease caused by the initial infection with varicella zoster virus (VZV), a member of the herpesvirus family. But you can get chickenpox from someone with shingles if you have not had chickenpox before. "People are living longer and therefore have more opportunity to contract shingles," he said.īut the rise is not linked to the vaccine. He noted that the United States does not keep national data on shingles doctors are not required to report cases of the condition.Ī few other things could explain the rise in shingles cases, Schaffner said. Since then, there has been at least a 90 percent drop in cases.īut while the number of cases of chickenpox has declined dramatically, the rate of shingles appears to be rising in areas where it has been studied, Schaffner said. The CDC recommends that children receive two doses of the chickenpox vaccine, the first at age 12 months or 15 months, and the second between ages 4 years and 6 years.īefore the chickenpox vaccine was introduced in 1995, Schaffner said, about 4 million people in the United States, mostly children, got the disease each year.
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