Chickenpox, which killed an average of 105 people annually in the U.S. in the early 1990s, in recent years has caused barely a dozen deaths a year. And a new study by researchers with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention credits the varicella vaccine, which was introduced in 1995, for the improvement.
What’s more, the study’s authors say that a new two-dose regime of the vaccine that was introduced in 2006 — previously it was administered in one dose — eventually might eliminate all deaths and reduce other harmful consequences of chickenpox.
As HealthDay reports, the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians have recommended that children receive two doses of the varicella vaccine. Experts said they hope the findings will reassure parents concerned about potential harm from childhood vaccinations, particularly the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. As a result of such fears, HealthDay said, some parents have avoided vaccinating their children, leading to a comeback in measles and some other diseases.
Government officials and other medical authorities — who worry about the potentially grave public health consequences if large numbers of families refuse to have their children inoculated for dangerous diseases — for years overwhelmingly have rejected the suggestion of a link between vaccines and autism.
However, in rare instances, vaccines have been linked to autism-like symptoms. And, as FairWarning reported in May, an analysis published in a New York law school journal that reviewed cases taken to the special federal court that handles vaccine cases found 83 instances in which the victims demonstrated evidence of autism.
Still, experts not associated with the new study such as Dr. Gail Demmler-Harrison, professor of pediatrics-infectious disease at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, discounted the risks, and praised the benefits, of the varicella vaccine.
“We don’t see severe varicella anymore,” she said. “There is a common misconception that chickenpox is a benign inconvenience of childhood and a rite of passage, but it almost always leaves lasting footprints and there is a lot of suffering with plain old chickenpox as well as how it [affects] the family,” she said.
“The risks of varicella and its complications are real, and the risks of vaccine are minimal,” she added.
According to the new study, published in the journal Pediatrics, the number of U.S. chickenpox deaths dropped to 13 in 2006 and 14 to 2007, the two most recent years for which figures were available.
The new study did not address whether double-dosing children will later in life prevent shingles, a painful disease that often strikes the elderly and occurs when the virus that causes chickenpox is reactivated.
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No we don’t see much measles or chicken pox anymore, hurray for vaccines, who cares that they are causing neurological disorders such as autism, ADHD, Lupus, Polio itself, autism like symptoms. Today 1 in 6 children in the U.S.have some kind of disability, yet they keep preaching vaccinate, why doesn’t this make any sense to me or any other normal person!
I forgot to mention that this article claims that in rare instances vaccines have been linked to autism like symptoms. That rare instance is taking place over and over again to the tune of millions of children now affected!
Vaccines are there and are helping the population, but I would not put such blind faith in what the pharmaceuticals companies push. For example, the issue of Prozac and neurological disorders.