Word: varicella
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...unpleasant as its itchy rash can be, getting chicken pox may still be the best way to protect against catching it again, especially in the youngest children. Doctors from Yale and Columbia found that the chicken-pox vaccine's ability to protect against the varicella virus weakens after the first year and is particularly ineffective in infants who were immunized before the age of 15 months...
Shingles? I recalled that my father had been afflicted by this strange ailment, but I knew little about shingles until I did some digging. I learned that shingles could be thought of as the revenge of the chicken pox, or of varicella-zoster, the virus behind this childhood disease. A close cousin of herpes simplex, which causes cold sores, varicella-zoster can be beaten back by the immune system but never eradicated. Like a bandit pursued by a posse, it retreats to a safe haven--bundles of nerve cells in the spinal cord or cranium. There varicella-zoster lies dormant...
...common ailment. Over the course of a lifetime, 2 out of every 10 people who have had chicken pox will experience its misery. But while the disease can strike at any time, the risk increases sharply after age 50. Why? Probably because older people have fewer antibodies against varicella-zoster circulating in their bloodstream. Also at high risk are those whose immune systems are compromised, such as AIDS and transplant patients...
...person vulnerable to chicken pox during adulthood, when the disease can be more serious. "It's impossible in the experimental studies preceding licensing to study a vaccine's effects for 50 years," says Dr. Caroline Hall of the American Academy of Pediatrics. "To the best of our knowledge, the varicella vaccine is safe...
...importance of a successful varicella vaccine goes beyond protecting children. Even those who recover uneventfully can be painfully reminded of the disease in adulthood by shingles. The chickenpox virus is a member of the herpes family of viruses that can lie dormant along nerves for decades and be suddenly reactivated, possibly by stress or injury. Says Virologist Stanley Plotkin of the University of Penn sylvania: "Shingles causes severe, insane pain in one in 10,000 Americans a year...