My daughter (just over one year) was in contact on Wednesday with a child who has subsequently developed chicken pox. We have not had her vaccinated for chicken pox yet. As the incubation period seems to be a minimum of 10 days, I was wondering if there would be any advantage to having her vaccinated now before the (possible) onset of symptoms. I know this is not a dedicated medical forum, all answers will clearly be taken with enormous grains of salt, just hoping for some advice before seeking out a doctor on a weekend.
Also- I am not looking for a debate on the merits of vaccination, just advice on this specific question and situation. Thank you.
Further Googling reveals that we have 72 hour minimum, but maybe up to 5 days. I’m off to the clinic, this thread can be closed.
Chicken pox is a nothing disease to a child. a bit of itching and it’s over.
Chicken pox to an adult is a very serious disease.
And you can only get it once.
Some folks recently looked at the data and reported: “Before vaccine licensure in 1995, 4 million cases per year resulted in 9300 hospitalizations [1] and 100 deaths each year [2]. Children bore the brunt of the health burden, accounting for >90% of cases, 66% of hospitalizations, and 45% of deaths (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], unpublished data); however, the risk of severe complications and death was highest among infants, adults [2], and immunocompromised individuals [3, 4]. Moreover, complications and deaths were described commonly among previously healthy individuals [59].”
Pamela A. Meyer, Jane F. Seward, Aisha O. Jumaan, and Melinda Wharton.
Varicella Mortality: Trends before Vaccine Licensure in the United States, The Journal of Infectious Diseases 2000;182:383-390
That’s misleading. Even if you get it mildly as a child, it can survive in a dormant state in your nerve cells and come back as shingles much later in life, which is much more than just itching. And a few kids die every year from plain old “nothing” chicken pox.
Recurrent cases of Chicken Pox are much more common than previously thought. My brother had it twice as a child, and I’ve heard of cases where people have been infected three or four times. Recurrent cases after adolescence seem to be far less common.
My daughter, now 17, got chickenpox last year. She had been vaccinated when she was very young. Right after she ‘healed’ from the chickenpox, is when she started to have problems with soreness in all of her joints. Her Rheumatologist told me that the chickenpox ‘brought out’ her Rheumatoid arthritis (It was already there, but it wasn’t active). Scary.
Vaccination after exposure to Varicella will not prevent infection from that exposure.
If an exposed individual has immune system problems like HIV, or is getting cancer therapy or other immunosuppressive therapy, they should be considered as candidates for receiving hyperimmune globulin, harvested from people who have high antibody titers to the Varicella virus.
Varicella (chicken pox) is usually a trivial illness for youngsters. But not always. Contact your doctor for questions.
QtM, MD
Yes some kids do die. It is about a 0.0023% death rate, whereas adults count for about 2% of chicken pox cases and about 47.5% of chicken pox deaths.
Can one get shingles later in life from the vaccine? I’ve never gotten a satisfactory answer on this one, and after seeing my dad suffer deeply from shingles I really want to know! I was immune to the chicken pox as a child so when I was a teenager they gave me the vaccine, to avoid an adult case. This would have been in 94 or 95ish.
The vaccine is relatively new. Time will tell.
You know, that’s what I was afraid of. 
I had every possible opportunity to get it as a kid. My babysitter came down with the spots the day after she sat for me, putting me right in prime infection time - nothing. My mom would send me to play with afflicted children in the hopes that I’d come down with it, but no, never happened. Her sister had had it in college and had a very rough time of it, so my mom was very anxious to make sure I got it as a kid, but no such luck!
I was the same way - my sister had it just after I was born, but I didn’t get it then though we lived in close quarters. My cousins all got it (very bad cases, IIRC) a few years later, and I never got it though we lived about five minutes away from each other and I played with them almost as much as my own sister. Never caught it from classmates or anyone. Finally, I got the vaccine when I was about 13 or 14 (around 1994-ish). My doctor tested me for antibodies and I didn’t have any, I just happened to never have caught it for some reason.
It’s odd how some people just don’t catch these things, but I’d rather have had it as a child than worry about a new vaccine, or worry that the vaccine doesn’t work as well as actually having had the pox.
Did I mention that my grandmother had the shingles in her eye?! Man, I wish I felt I could really trust that vaccine.
I don’t know what research has been done on this, but the vaccine is an attenuated live virus, so logically, it should be theoretically possible for it to enter the dormant state that could later lead to shingles, but it should also be very very unlikely. Far less likely than a real virus doing it during an infection.
I must say I hope you’re wrong (about post-exposure immunization, not the triviality of the illness). From here:
We went and got her vaccinated, in any case. I hope the effort turns out to be worthwhile.
Well, this article says that there is some evidence that using the Oka vaccine can prevent some infections or minimize case severity. But few studies are out there (at least as of 2001), and they all dealt with small numbers, and a few had no controls.
I’d still advocate immune globulin treatment if it is really necessary to avoid an outbreak, such as for immunosupressed patients.
Interesting. Thanks for pointing that out.
If anybody’s got more current data on the use of the vaccine to treat acute exposures, I’d love to see it!