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Home > Portable Practical Pediatrics > The Chickenpox/ Shingles Story (Pedcast)
Podcast: Portable Practical Pediatrics
Episode:

The Chickenpox/ Shingles Story (Pedcast)
Category: Kids & family
Duration: 00:00:00
Publish Date: 2017-02-06 09:41:14
Description: Voice introduction I was having a discussion the other day with the mom of one of my patients. She was asking me why we vaccinate children against chickenpox; a disease that her mother told her was a benign mild childhood illness that doesn't hurt kids.  Keep in mind that almost none of the parents of my current patients have ever seen or had any experience with the disease of chickenpox.  The disease is virtually gone in the United States so everything parents know today is based on what they have heard.  This particular mom had so many questions and a few misconceptions about chickenpox. Because of this I thought many of my blog listeners probably have many of the same questions, so today were going to talk about the disease known as chickenpox: the myths and facts and the rationale behind vaccinating today's children. Why do we bother vaccinating for a harmless childhood illness? Music introduction The biology of chickenpox Let's start with the basics. Chickenpox is caused by a herpes virus that goes by few names:  Varicella, herpes zoster, and  HHV-3 or human herpes virus type three. It's very contagious, one of the most contagious diseases ever known to exist.  In fact, it can spread airborne up to 7 feet, which means that Just being in the same room with someone who has chickenpox can spread the disease to the others in the room. No touch is needed.  The rash itself looks a lot like it's deadly cousin, smallpox.  Fortunately smallpox has been eradicated from earth since the 1970's since it is a deadly infection in both adults and children.   Chickenpox however is usually a relatively mild illness for most kids so my patient’s mom was correct on that point. In fact when I was a child it was common for Mom's to have a chickenpox parties when there was an active case in the neighborhood so that all the kids would go ahead and get exposed and get the disease out of the way. It was just considered a right of passage to have chickenpox.  Spring was the big season for chickenpox for some reason. So why do we go to all the expense of vaccinating children against what's usually such a mild disease. Well there are two reasons.  The first is that there were deaths from chickenpox years ago the illness was common. Usually a child got chickenpox and then got a nasty strep or staph infection on top of some of there open sores. This could be lethal. Remember the flesh eating strep?  Germs like this love all the broken skin chickenpox creates. Death from natural chickenpox happened 150 times per year in the United States before we start vaccinating in children 1995.  But 11,000 children a year ended up in the hospital secondary to complications from the chickenpox in the US alone, many with life threatening complications such as encephalitis, an often fatal liver disease called Reyes syndrome, pneumonia, or just good old dehydration. Chickenpox can be a very frightening disease. The second reason we vaccinate children today is a little more complicated to understand. You need to understand that everyone who gets infected with any chickenpox virus harbors this herpes virus for the rest of his or her life, an infectious disease time bomb so to speak. In the short run, the virus becomes dormant, hanging out silently for decades in the nervous system of anyone who has had chickenpox. But weaken that person's immune system with age, sickness, or stress, and it can spring right back out as a disease known as shingles. You've heard about that old age disease shingles. Remember, shingles and chickenpox are caused by the same virus. Chickenpox is the form of the disease that is systemic, in the blood, and everywhere. A child gets chickenpox on their initial exposure to the chickenpox virus. If the virus reactivates in a localized area we call that shingles and that's a serious health problem for older folks. You probably have heard that children can get chickenpox from touching someone shingles if they've never had chickenpox.
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