A. In someone who has never had chickenpox, a vaccine would strengthen opposite a illness that is distant some-more critical in adults than it is in children, pronounced Dr. Mark S. Lachs, executive of geriatrics for a NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System and highbrow of medicine during Weill Cornell Medical College.
After childhood chickenpox, a varicella pathogen is never separated from a physique though lies asleep in haughtiness roots. Decades later, it might reactivate along a haughtiness pathway and means a really unpleasant unreasonable called shingles, and later, in many cases, a determined pain called postherpetic neuralgia, or PHN.
Therefore, for many people over 60, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a shingles vaccine. It safely reduces (but does not eliminate) a risk of both shingles and PHN in those who have had chickenpox, Dr. Lachs said.
In someone who never had chickenpox, he said, a regard is not shingles though adult chickenpox, that has “fatality rates 25 times aloft than in children.â€
Such a chairman should instead be vaccinated opposite a primary infection with a varicella virus, Dr. Lachs said. The vaccine differs in strength from a one for shingles and is given in dual injections, a month apart.
C. CLAIBORNE RAY
Readers might contention questions by mail to Question, Science Times, The New York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018, or by e-mail to [email protected].
More on: Health Medicine Network