Chicken pox vaccine

[dalel]

Hi I'm new and been seeing a few post on the chicken pox vaccine.

Thinking of getting my daughter vaccinated against it. It is going round her nursery at the moment so more than likely she is going to get it anytime now.

Whenever she's Ill with anything it really does affect her bad.

Would you advise me getting got her?
What are the pros and cons?
Is it worth it?

I'm really in 2 minds

DS was vaccinated by a specialist team as he was in a research study and they said it has to be the same day as MMR or you need to wait 4 weeks. Older DD had the MMRV (V = Varicella aka Chickenpox) at 12 months as per the US schedule and when she had her preschool boosters in the UK we took her to a private doctor to avoid multiple appointments and she had the MMR and then a separate chickenpox vaccine at the same appointment.

Another risk of allowing chicken pox naturally in children is that there is an increase in strokes for 6 months after (4 fold increase). Something I don’t think many people realise. It’s still a small risk of course.

The NHS fears an increase in shingles cases if children are routinely vaccinated against chicken pox.

The risk of shingles isn't for the vaccinated child. It's for the general public. The child is highly unlikely to get shingles as they never had the wild virus.

When a child has chicken pox it boosts the immunity of the adults who come into contact with them, making it less likely those adults will get shingles.

I'm not prepared to allow my child to get chicken pox so that the adult population can boost their immunity. My children are vaccinated.

And that’s not been an issue in countries where chickenpox vaccines have been on the standard vaccine schedule (leaving aside the issue of allowing children to suffer a potentially life-changing or fatal illness to protect an elderly population from another disease). The only reason I can think of that the varicella vaccine isn’t part of the NHS vaccine schedule currently is cost or inertia.

There's a vaccine available to protect against shingles in older people too.

Hi OP

There are quite a few previous threads on this if youd like to have a look.

It was 60 per dose x 2 doses a month apart a few years ago. Can only have at over a year old and a month after the other live vaccinations.

I know children who have been hospitalised, families who have had holidays, birthday parties etc ruined by chicken pox. Not awful on the grand scheme of things but a no brainer when it's completely preventable

I think that’s a known risk and the advice is a booster in adulthood.

I’m seriously considering it for DD. She’s 6 and has so far escaped. She’s just getting over molluscum and because she’s a sensitive little thing, the drama and distress over molluscum bumps was horrendous. Would rather not have to put her (or me!) through that with CP.

I paid for my kids mainly on the basis of discomfort and inconvenience of CP.

We didn’t have DD1 vaccinated and she was quite poorly with it, had DD2 booked to have it and she came down with it days before she was due to be vaccinated, again really quite poorly with it. If we have a third we will be getting them vaccinated

I'm a medical scientist and vaccinated my DC against chicken pox. My view was - it can be fatal/very serious and why not vaccinate against it if you can?

Be aware that there has been a shortage of the chickenpox vaccine so it may be hard to get hold of just now

To counter this, I have doctor friends very for it. The reason it’s not on the nhs immunisation list is costs (most kids don’t get ill enough to require treatment) and questions re strength of immunity in the future. I have another doctor friend who wouldn’t bother with it for those reasons too.

But our friends child had a cytokine reaction to chicken pox (I know it’s very rare) and ended up in intensive care with pox on internal organs. So we decided to get the vaccine and not deal with poorly children either.

As others have said, it is included in immunisation programmes in many countries, so perfectly safe.

A few posters have mentioned this already, but it’s worth emphasizing that chicken pox poses a very serious threat to pregnant women and their fetuses - look up “congenital varicella”. As more and more children in the UK get vaccinated, I would argue that it becomes more important to get your own children vaccinated, because as more children are vaccinated, the amount of circulating virus will go down. As this happens, the likelihood of getting infected as a toddler or child will decrease, leaving the risk of acquiring chicken pox as an adolescent or adult.

I’m in the US now, and I’ve yet to see a case of chicken pox in a child, only in adults. In order to work in the hospital, I was required to have my varicella antibody level checked to protect pregnant women. I have seen a few cases of adult and adolescent chicken pox, and thankfully all recovered, but they were very miserable.

That’s an interesting point hdoodle I suppose if more and more people get vaccinated privately then this does pass on a higher and higher risk that the unvaccinated will end up catching chicken pox in later life. Seems a bit unfair on the children who are left in this position as their parents can’t afford to vaccinate. Hopefully it will get added to uk vaccination list soon so that it can be uniformly vaccinate across the population

DC1 was very poorly with chicken pox and has some scarring. I also had to take quite a bit of time off work with him.
Really wish he'd been vaccinated and didn't hesitate with DC2 and 3.

This

@Bartg I assume that NHS is considering this point and keeping track of vaccinations. I do think it’s a bit ridiculous that we vaccinate for rubella and not for chicken pox. Rubella (German measles) is rarely of any consequence unless you are in the first trimester of pregnancy, in which it is devastating. Vaccination is mandatory to protect pregnant women and their unborn children. Chicken pox is less devastating than rubella, but still up there on the list of infections that cause congenital disease.

I know it’s an economic decision not to mandate the chicken pox vaccine, but considering all the time lost because parents have to stay home with sick children, I’m surprised that the numbers don’t work out in favor of vaccination.

I'd planned to get DD vaccinated over summer ( hadn't realised it was possible before) but she caught chickenpox first. She was poorly for over a week and still has some marks which I suspect will scar.

I think it’s important to understand that a lot of what the NHS recommends or decides is driven by cost considerations - not what would be best.

I was told around 2015 by a GP who works in public health that they had been all set to introduce varicella to the regular vaccination schedule, but there was a whooping cough outbreak plus a dip in the MMR stats, and it was pulled at the last minute to avoid complicating vaccine messaging (ie. it was thought better to concentrate on getting MMR and pertussis up to better levels, as they are deadlier diseases). Don’t know if there are any plans to reintroduce it. I guess right now the Covid and flu vaccine programmes are the priority.

@postcardpuffin That is very interesting. In order to protect the elderly against shingles, I think the optimal strategy would have been to roll out the shingles vaccine for ages 50 or 60+ as opposed to 70+, followed by the chicken pox vaccine for the children. Since children who have been vaccinated for chicken pox are much less likely to contract shingles than unvaccinated children, eventually shingles rates would diminish.

I don’t buy the argument that keeping a certain level of chicken pox is protecting the elderly from shingles as a forward thinking policy. In the US, fewer than 100 people die from shingles each year, where 90% of children have received the chicken pox vaccine and less than 40% of elderly have had the shingles vaccine. The death rate from chicken pox is nearly zero. In the UK, each year, 50 people die from shingles and 25 die from chicken pox. The US has more than 4x the population of the UK.

That’s very interesting hdoodle. It’s almost as if someone made the decision not to put it in the vaccine schedule and they are just digging their heels now and not wanting to admit they were wrong.
But I think more likely is that it just must not be worth it from a cost benefit analysis. Which is surprising as I am sure I read somewhere that rotavirus was added to schedule purely to keep babies being admitted to hospital as it was costly treating them. You would think the same cost benefit would be applied to chicken pox

My older one suffered very badly with chicken pox and still has the scars. I got my younger ones vaccinated. Was the easiest of all the vaccines and they have dodged several rounds of chicken pox going around their nursery/school. I would if you recommend . Chicken pox is horrible

Not sure if OP is still checking this thread, but wonder what the decision was? Either way, good luck!