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Varicella vaccination
a critical review of the evidence
S A Skull, E E L Wang
Department of
Pediatrics, The Hospital for Sick Children and University of Toronto,
Canada
Correspondence to: Dr S Skull, Victorian Infectious Diseases Service, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Parkville, 3050 Australia sue.skull@mh.org.au
Accepted 20 March 2001
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
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Introduction |
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Varicella (chickenpox) is an universal, highly infectious disease characterised by a pruritic vesicular eruption associated with fever and malaise caused by varicella zoster virus (VZV). In children, the illness is usually self limiting, lasting four to five days, but at least 1% of children under 15 years experience a complication.1 2 These include secondary bacterial infection (particularly with group A beta haemolytic streptococcus),3 pneumonia, encephalitis, haemorrhagic complications, hepatitis, arthritis, and Reye syndrome.4 Furthermore, 10-50% of all children will visit a physician with an infection.5-7 The mortality rate of varicella in children under 14 years in the United States is estimated at 2 per 100 000 cases,8 and 90% of these have no risk factors for severe disease.9
Adults experience only 5% of all varicella cases, but experience more
severe disease (hospitalisations 18 per 1000) and deaths (50 per
100 000).10 Herpes zoster (shingles), a painful,
dermatomal, vesicular rash occurs with reactivation of the virus in
approximately 15% of
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This article has been cited by other articles:
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English, R.
(2003). Varicella. Pediatr. Rev.
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Perez, E. E., Bokszczanin, A., McDonald-McGinn, D., Zackai, E. H., Sullivan, K. E.
(2003). Safety of Live Viral Vaccines in Patients With Chromosome 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome (DiGeorge Syndrome/Velocardiofacial Syndrome). Pediatrics
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Uhari, M.
(2002). Review: varicella vaccination is effective in children. Evid. Based Med.
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Immunology (including allergy)
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