Page 80 - Spring2020

Vaccination Updates

CHICKENPOX VACCINES AND SHINGLES:
HOW THEY’RE RELATED—AND WHY IT MATTERS
By Kendall Nelson, Director, The Greater Good

Because Chickenpox was once an almost universal Because chickenpox is generally not harm-
chickenpox childhood experience and a routine rite of ful in childhood, doctors used to commonly
passage. Nearly every child under the age of recommend intentionally exposing children to
is generally fifteen contracted the generally mild illness, the disease. Parents held chickenpox parties,
not harmful experienced a full recovery after five to ten days believing it was prudent to let their children get
in childhood, and gained natural immunity for life. Today, chickenpox at a young age so they would avoid
however, chickenpox is much less common in the potentially more serious complications of
doctors used the U.S. due to a mass varicella (chickenpox) contracting the disease as a teenager or adult.
to commonly vaccination program that reaches most children. Nowadays, many parents choose to vaccinate
Chickenpox is a contagious disease caused their children to prevent chickenpox, and others
recommend by infection with the varicella-zoster virus—a are forced to vaccinate so that their children can
intentionally member of the herpes virus family and the same attend public and private schools and daycare
exposing virus that causes shingles. Chickenpox spreads centers. Varicella is on the list of mandatory
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children to through coughing and sneezing or by touching vaccines in all fifty states.
or breathing in the virus particles that come
the disease. from chickenpox blisters. Prior to the advent VACCINE ADVERSE EVENTS
of the varicella vaccine in 1995, chickenpox Two varicella vaccines are available in
affected an estimated four million Americans the U.S., both of which are live-virus vaccines
annually (although surveillance data were spotty made by the pharmaceutical company Merck.
as only about half of all states reported any The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
cases at all). Children who experienced wild approved Varivax in 1995 for use in people one
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chickenpox developed a distinctive blister-like year of age and older; Varivax is meant solely
rash, with blisters appearing first on the chest, to prevent chickenpox. In 2005, the FDA also
back and face and then spreading over the whole approved Merck’s ProQuad vaccine for use in
body. Other potential symptoms included low- children one through twelve years of age. Pro-
grade fever, headache, runny nose, fatigue, loss Quad (MMRV) combines the varicella vaccine
of appetite or itchiness. In most cases, chicken- with the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR)
pox resolved on its own. vaccine. The CDC recommends two doses of
In 2000, researchers at the Centers for Dis- varicella vaccine, with the first administered at
ease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated twelve to fifteen months of age and the second
that the illness was responsible for an average of administered between four and six years of age.
ninety deaths per year in the twenty-five years While avoiding chickenpox may sound like
leading up to the vaccine’s introduction (1970- a good idea to some, there are several things one
1994). However, nearly three in ten deaths (28 should consider prior to vaccinating, including
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percent) were in persons with preexisting high- the safety of the varicella vaccines. According
risk conditions. Adults over fifty years of age to the CDC’s website, rare side effects caused
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reportedly accounted for another 19 percent of by the vaccines include severe rash, infections
deaths, but different CDC authors later observed of the lungs or liver, meningitis, seizures, viral
that “an unknown but large proportion of deaths and bacterial pneumonia and severe infection
attributed to varicella among individuals aged with the chickenpox virus from the vaccine.
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50 years and older are likely to be herpes zoster Data submitted to the federal government’s Vac-
or causes other than varicella.” 3 cine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)
80 Wise Traditions SPRING 2020