I was always told from my mother (a nurse) that if you had ever contracted chickenpox that you built up an immunity to smallpox. Other sources seem to support my mother. Anyone else ever hear this?
IANAD, but I think that there is a relationship between cowpox and smallpox, but not between chickenpox and smallpox. I’m sure that a more knowledgeable answer will be here soon.
The only ones I’ve ever heard of are chickenpox-chickenpox and cowpox-smallpox. (Of course, the first vaccine was against smallpox, and was made from infectious cowpox material; the word vaccine comes from vaccinia, cowpox, from vacca, cow.)
The column being referenced is:
How long does a smallpox vaccination protect you?(9-Nov-2001)
I don’t know the answer to your question, Rufus, but since you started the thread, I’ve got a comment on the column. Cecil says,
I recall hearing a segment on All Things Considered on Monday about smallpox vaccination. While admitting that data on long-term effectiveness of smallpox vaccine were not very available, the segment did refer to a study done in Liverpool about 100 years ago (? I don’t have speakers here at work so I can’t listen to the segment I linked to above, so I’m going on memory here) that demonstrated that smallpox vaccine did substantially increase survival rate even upwards of 50 years after inocculation. Note “substantially increased survival rate” =/= “100% effective,” but there was an impressive difference in survival rates between the vaccinated group (~95%?) and unvaccinated group (~50%?).
Why do small pox vaccinations leave a scar? It must of been a huge needle, because none of the others seem to.
Nope. Here is the Bifurcated needle that was developed for the vaccine.
From your link it says “The requisite amount of reconstituted vaccine is held between the prongs of the needle and vaccination is done by multiple punctures; 15 strokes, at right angles to the skin over the deltoid muscle, are rapidly made within an area of about 5 mm in diameter.”
Is this the reason for the scar? If I read this correctly, then I assume that the patient was shot 15 times. Well, no wonder.
[Bolding mine]
Bolding is mine. The scar seems to be a result of actual scarification more than injection, but it seems clear that both methods were required to make the vaccine work. Why that is, I don’t know.
The poser of the original question that Cecil answered says
I have multiple smallpox vacination scars: three, as nearly as I can count, leaving a slight cratering in the skin covering my left deltoid about an inch-and-a-half long. The story I got from my parents is that I jumped the first couple of times they tried to vaccinate me, and they decided to do it again just in case I hadn’t gotten the goods.
I just wanted to share. 
When it’s actually a herpes!
This is the case for chicken pox. Varicella zoster, the causative agent of chicken pox is really a herpes virus and not actually a member of the same family/class of viruses (the aptly named “pox” family) that causes smallpox and cowpox. Therefore, previous exposure to chicken pox will not protect you from small pox. The only thing exposure to chicken pox will do for you is predispose you to shingles later on in life if/when the virus decides to one day pop out of your nervous system where it’s been hibernating and remind you of one of the fundamental characteristics of herpes viruses–they never really go away. FYI The name of the virus represents these two clinical syndroms associated with it–Varicella = chicken pox; zoster = shingles.
Michele
who is not a medical doctor, but did take a virology course while working on her PhD and for some reason found this piece of trivia interesting enough to retain.
With respect to multiples, my grandfather had 3 or 4 scars the size of nickels or quarters on his upper arms. He worked on the Panama canal during its construction, so maybe there was some greater danger there. Or maybe multiple vaccination was more common during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.
I have a faint recollection of getting a second vaccination myself, possibly at age 10 or 12, and being told that if it formed a scab, I was still good to go. But I could be confusing that with some other test for TB or something.
Guess I should have re-checked with my mom before posting. Once someone said cowpox i realized I had crossed two stories in my head (damn you childhood attention span!).
I have a very faint scar on my left deltoid from my first vaccination back in the early 60’s. However, although I’ve been re-vaccinated at least twice since then (through military service) I’ve never developed any additional scarring.
I know squat about medicine or disease, but I’m guessing that the initial scarring results from a local reaction to the vaccine, rather than the physical trauma done by the bifurcated needle. The needle simply doesn’t do that much damage, no more than you’d get from a mild scrape against a rough surface that would cause a small scab.
It’s comforting for me to know that I’m probably safe should a smallpox outbreak occur – now if I can just keep from getting wiped out by a drunk driver on my way home from work tonight…
The good news about smallpox is that there is a reasonable likelihood that your vaccination is still protecting you, even if it’s been 40 or 50 years. Here’s an interesting article that I thought explained it well:
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2057774
Mike
I vaguely remember something about a bad batch of smallpox vaccine making it into the mix and an entire year’s worth of vacinees had to be re-vaccinated. This would have been sometime in the mid to late 60s. Anyone recall this incident and can shed more light onto it?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by zut * Cecil says,
My wife’s Preventive Medicive Dept. is beginning a study of just this topic. They’ll be drawing blood from volunteers. They’ll evaluate the degree of smallpox protection by some sort of blood test.
No doubt other labs are doing similar studies. We should know a lot more about this question soon.
I noticed you didn’t mention that an adult who has shingles can cause an outbreak of chicken pox in their children.
While we’re on the subject of smallpox vaccinations and the resulting scars, could someone please tell me why on earth I have a scar on my right pectoral instead of on a deltoid?
The location for the vaccination is not universal. Perhaps one of your parents requested that it went on the pec. I have a friend who has his scar on his leg somewhere, because his mother didn’t want him to have a large visible scar.