Healthy Living pluck away the myths about chickenpox
Chickenpox affects both children and adults. It can be life threatening but there are many ways to lessen the severity of the infection. A weak immune system, however, can lead to the more severe cases. There also many myths about chicken pox that a pediatrician will clarify in this segment of Healthy Living.
Marleni Cuellar, Reporting
Chickenpox is common enough that all it really takes to diagnose is the detection of the ‘water bumps’ that are synonymous to the infection. But along with its easy recognition are several misconceptions about the infection. Pediatrician, Dr. Cecilio Eck helps us to clarify the facts.
Dr. Cecilio Eck, Pediatrician
dr. cecilio eck
“Chickenpox is an infection caused by one of the herpes family of viruses. When you get it, it causes an infection that is usually systemic meaning that you get fever that you might get a little sore throat with it and then the lesions which prove that it is chickenpox and those are water bumps or vesicles all over the body. And then it could involve inside the nose inside the mouth and inside the ears if you have it really bad.”
He explains that chance and a weakened immune system are what contribute to the more severe cases. Chickenpox is considered deadly for neonates, or newborns, but others may also experience complications that can also lead to mortality.
Dr. Cecilio Eck
“Complications of it which are rare but they do occur. Two common ones that are life threatening are varicella cerebellitis or an infection of the cerebellum part of the brain and the second one is a varicella pneumonia; both of those are life threatening even though very rare since being back in Belize I have seen both at the K.H.M.H.”
The infection can last for as long as two weeks and exposure to an infected person is what causes transmission.
Dr. Cecilio Eck
“The incubation period after being exposed to somebody with it is about two to three days and it can go as long as fourteen days before you start to get sick. The infection can last for upwards of two weeks but again it varies on your immune system and whether or not you’ve been immunized for it.”
Marleni Cuellar
“How does one catch chickenpox?”
Dr. Cecilio Eck
“You become exposed to somebody who has it, through direct contact. You can get infected from the lesions itself or from rarely airborne infections from respiratory tract meaning you would cough and some of the virus would come across and get in.”
But when exactly during the infection is a person most contagious?
Dr. Cecilio Eck
“This may be a bit frightening but it is contagious five days before the first bump appears until the last bump scars over or heals. Because of this you may be exposed to chickenpox and not even know because the person who exposed you may not have lesions on him or her.”
Not the beginning, not the end, but the entire period of infection. What about the common belief that adults always experience a more severe outbreak?
Dr. Cecilio Eck
“People who are protected are between the ages of one to ten years. Between that time the lesions are not as severe. Less than age one and over age ten are most severe.”
Marleni Cuellar
“Why is that?”
Dr. Cecilio Eck
“Again it has to do with your immune system again it has to do with how well your immune system works. If over age ten your immune system in competent so it makes a greater effort to fight the virus and so you get a greater number of lesions coming out all over the body.”
This confirms that factoid. The last point though has two schools of thought: A person can or a person can’t catch chickenpox twice.
Dr. Cecilio Eck
“The reason for this is that with the herpes virus, our body when it becomes threatened and it encounters one of these viruses and it fights it off you get lifelong immunity. So your body creates memory cells that in the future if you become exposed to it you can fight it off effectively. Now a complication of chickenpox again is that during the first infection or the first time you get it, the virus can live within a part or spinal cord and down the road when you become old, immune-compromised and very sick, you can get shingles. Shingles is are pox like lesions that come up on only one part of the body depending on which part of the spinal cord that the virus becomes activated.”
Both chickenpox & shingles are caused by the same virus, perhaps this is why shingles is sometimes referred to as the Adult Chickenpox. In 1995, the FDA approved a vaccine for chickenpox. It is included in to vaccination schedule in more developed countries. A single shot protects children over one while those over thirteen require two. The vaccination is available in Belize at private clinics like Dr. Eck’s and can be administered to adults.
Dr. Cecilio Eck
“If they’ve never had had chicken pox and adult can get a vaccine two shots a month apart and they would be immunized for life. This is not a part of our protocol and the reason is that it is not one of the illnesses that kills regularly. The ones that we protect against are the dangerous illnesses.”
If the investment in vaccination does not appeal to you, Dr Eck advises that once exposed the best way to curtail a severe infection is to seek a doctor early.
Dr. Cecilio Eck
“There are anti-virals you can take that if it started, within seventy-two hours, three days of seeing the first bump it limits how many bumps come up and how long the illness lasts but you have to come in very early, the earlier the better.”
