Word: varicella
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Measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, diphtheria, polio. One by one in this century the scourges of youth have fallen before the marvel of vaccines. But there has been no similar victory against the last of childhood's common infectious diseases: chickenpox, or as it is known medically, varicella. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the virus-caused illness strikes about 3 million youngsters each year, approximately as many children as there are babies born...
...particular urgency for immunization. The disease had long been regarded as a benign malady, and although it tends to hit adults more severely than children, most people seemed to suffer through the rash, high fever, sore throat and painful joints without ill effect. But increasingly, doctors have realized that varicella contains a variety of hidden threats. Among them: bacterial infections of the skin, pneumonia, encephalitis and the severe brain disorder known as Reye's syndrome. It can also be life-threatening to children taking immune-suppressing anticancer drugs. According to Government estimates, chickenpox-related illness leads to 100 deaths...
...shots had developed chickenpox. But no vaccinated child caught the disease. A few children getting the vaccine had pain, swelling and redness at the injection site and chickenpox-like rashes, but there were no long-lasting or serious adverse effects. The experimental vaccine was developed from a strain of varicella vi rus isolated in 1974 in Japan by Dr. Michiaki Takahashi. Researchers used a live but weakened form of the virus to trigger the body's immunological system into producing antibodies against the disease. The idea, explains Weibel, is "to induce immunity without inducing clinical disease...
This perplexing persistence is characteristic of all five members of the human herpes family. After herpes simplex 1 and 2, the best known is the varicella-zoster virus, the cause of chicken pox, the nation's third most common ailment. Three-quarters of the U.S. population gets chicken pox by age 15. Most are never bothered by the virus again, though it will linger in their nervous systems for the rest of their lives. Some will not be so lucky. They will be victims of shingles, a painful, blistering rash that is triggered in adults when, for reasons unknown...
...researchers at Massachusetts Public Health Biological Laboratories have found a way to screen out and concentrate chicken pox antibodies from the blood of healthy people. The procedure is similar to that used to extract gamma globulin for treatment of those exposed to rabies and hepatitis. Called VZIG, for Varicella-Zoster Immune Globulin, after the virus that causes chicken pox and shingles, the antiserum became available through the American Red Cross blood centers last week. The first supplies will go to vulnerable newborns and children with leukemia or weakened immune systems; a dosage provides immunity for about six weeks. But VZIG...