Is chickenpox more unpleasant than two injections?

[cngodltlbi]

On average.

No immunity is not a given.

We have been advised dd1 should have the vaccine, she has a complex medical history ans yet we cannot find a vaccine dose to give her. Her paed and GP have agreed to pay but yet we can't get it in her.

Tbh I'd pay to get her a dose.

My DD developed meningitis from the chicken pox virus.
We would all have rather had 2 injections!

Presumably that was viral meningitis Roast?

Best case scenario, by far, is to have wild chicken pox infection as a healthy young child, conferring life-long immunity.

a) No it can still kill you.

b) It doesn't give you life long immunity, many people have had cp twice, some 3 times.

I have a healthy, breastfed child who is at lower risk of complications

Compared to what/who? A child with leukemia?

Your child is less likely to contract a disease if they have a healthy immune system, but that doesn't mean they are at less risk of complications.

Best case scenario of the vaccine is that it gives you lifelong immunity.

a) No, it can still kill you

b) No, it doesn't. It's around 85% effective, so 15% of people will still contract CP despite having had the vaccine AND immunity wanes so you don't know when you are no longer immune and need a booster meaning that you may be left vulnerable when you are an adult and there is a greater risk of complications. Also, the vaccine is less effective in adults so your boosters are less likely to work when you need them most.

Re-infection with CP after natural infection ranges from around 4-10% iirc so still more effective than the vaccine.

"Your child is less likely to contract a disease if they have a healthy immune system, but that doesn't mean they are at less risk of complications."

Link to support this please? Why wouldn't you be less likely to have complications if you are healthy? Children with suppressed immune systems are more likely to suffer complications.

Chicken pox disease acquired immunity is also only about 90% effective www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12042544

The difference in incidence of complications between immunocompromised and healthy patients does not seem to be high (see for example here www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22389983 and here www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21569228), neurologic complications seem to be more frequent in immunocompetent kids even (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20004861) and there are very significant complications in perfectly healthy and immunocompetent children (like my friend's daughter, who developed chicken pox osteomyelitis and nearly lost her leg - 2x chicken pox vaccine would have certainly beat 4 weeks of IV antibiotics in the hospital).

I did say that above Catherina - it seems to range between 4-10% which is still more effective than the vaccine.

Your first link may show that the risk of complications is similar in both healthy and immunocompromised but the most common complications for the healthy children were mainly in skin/soft tissue so infected spots etc rather than the more serious complications that were more likely to affect the immunocompromised group.

The NHS have said that complications from CP are more common in people with weakened immune systems and rare in healthy children.

Can I just say that you seem to have an awful lot of friends whose children seem to get very ill with the typical childhood diseases. I have a huge family and friends in several countries and I don't know anyone whose children have had the range of complications that you talk about on this board.

Your second link didn't work for me.

My friend paid to get her daughter vaccinated and she still caught chicken pox so it isn't 100% effective.

No vaccine is 100% effective as there are several strains of chickenpox and the vaccine is about 10% effective. The vaccine exposes a child to several strains of chickenpox so offers slightly different protection to "wild chickenpox".

My daughter only had one chicken pox jab and she developed chickenpox four weeks later from exposure at nursery. She had chickenpox very mildly and I believe that the immunity of the jab reduced the severity.

The fact that chickenpox complications are rare in healthy children is no comfort to the families who experience complications from wild chicken pox. In the same way the fact that vaccine damage is extremely rare is no comfort to families who believe that children have been damaged by a vaccine.

Prehaps we should give all teens the varicella booster to prevent adult chickenpox.

The vaccine is A LOT more effective than 10% and also, the various "strains" are all covered by the same immunity.

Bumbley - I originally met my friend with the severely ill daughter from chicken pox on a pro-vaccine board (but we are real life friends now), so this particular anecdote is not totally random. However, my own son had chicken pox twice, one of his playmates from daycare was hospitalised with chicken pox induced seizures for a week, my best friend's daughter had chicken pox from hell with pox on every spot of visible and invisible inch of skin (she was the reason I grabbed my daughter and ran to have her vaccinated), her son has some visible chicken pox scars in his face. I don't think that is totally out of the ordinary, also not if you look around in this thread. Some children have no fuss at all with the pox (like myself - my infection must have been subclinical), some have very bad courses (even different within families). That is pretty much the "normal" distribution and unfortunately, there is no predicting whether your (generally healthy) child will be in the "5 spots, all over in a couple of days" group, the "itch from hundreds of pox drove her up the bend" group, or the "chicken pox stroke, will never be the same" group (although granted, that one is only about 1 in 12000 kids anyway).

So pleased to have seen this thread. I have 3 dcs aged 6, 4 and 2, none if which have had chicken pox. I am considering getting them vaccinated and would be interested in some advice.
I have never had chicken pox but was tested as immune when I was pregnant. How in earth does that happen?

Gumps you probably had it so mildly no one noticed.

I had chicken pox as an adult and it was horrifyingly painful.

Someone on the labour ward had it when dd was born, and didn't tell staff until someone noticed, as I wasn't immune dd had to have painful immunoglobulin injections in her legs. Horrible for a newborn. She also had shingles at age 7 which is a touch unusual.

Someone at our school died from chickenpox - personally I would go for the vaccine.

CatherinaJTV, have to say that I agree with bumbleymummy that you have a lot of friends or acquaintances who get every illness much worst than anyone else. Statistical speaking, I wouldn't expect any one person to know so many people who were so ill with such typically run of the mill things.

As said - if you look along this thread, my friends' experience is not unusual (neither is a subclinical infection, Gumps, I had my titers tested before trying to conceive number one, since I did not recall having had a single pox ever and my titers came back strongly positive).

In any case - hospitalisation rate for chicken pox is about 0.5 - 1%, I have "lived" through several chicken pox outbreaks in DD's and DS's daycares (combined "population" about 200) and DD's primary school (population about 300). One hospitalised child is probably lower than statistically expected and a couple of severe course amongst the kids of friends not unusual. I am glad that your friends all did so well.

FDS - as for HPV outcomes, cervical incompetence is a known consequence of conisation. I cannot believe that you don't know anyone who had a LEEPS procedure/conisation or other treatment for cervical neoplasia. Maybe this is just something your friends/family didn't talk about.

Ds' experience of chickenpox was nowhere near as serious as some of the people on this thread. He had cellulitis as complication from scratching the spots. Poor ds had both eczema and chickenpox at the same time so scratched for England when no one was looking. Thankfully ds was treated by the GP and did not need hospital treatment.

"The vaccine is A LOT more effective than 10% and also, the various "strains" are all covered by the same immunity."

I am being dopey the vaccine is 90% effective.

It would be interesting for a research project to compare the rates of shingles in people who had the vaccine and those who have had wild chickenpox in fifty years time. However I hope that such a project will be messed up by the shingles vaccination and no one will ever suffer shingles!

Catherina, I would say that your experience is well out of the ordinary. People on these threads will mainly talk about worst case scenarios but in real life most people are pushed to find anyone with anything beyond an infected spot that may need antibiotics.

ReallyTired, I'm certainly not against the idea of testing people as teenagers/young adults and vaccinating those who are still not immune because it has a higher risk of complications in adults.

Catherina, I"ve had a Lletz procedure ( 2 in fact because the first one didn't get all the cells) so I am well aware of the risks. Recent studies (including a meta analysis) have not found a significant increase in the incidence of cervical incompetence as a result of LEEP unless they have had a large specimen removed or multiple procedures.

ReallyTired, according to the CDC the vaccine is around 85% effective (ranges from 81%-86%)

I had CP aged 9, and have never had it again. I have 5 DC. 4 of them had CP one Christmas (one got it from school and passed it on).

DS2 caught it first. He was 9 and really ill - spots in his eye and his throat. DD was almost 13 and also pretty ill, having been exposed to it many times when younger and never catching it. DS1 (11) had one spot on his chest and didn't really notice it and DS3 (7) had a few spots and wasn't even unwell.

DS2 then had CP again a further two times before leaving school, yet none of the others had it again.

DD2 caught CP at nursery when she was about 13 mo. She was covered in spots and very miserable. This summer, aged 6, she got shingles.

So I wonder how effective the vaccine would be, if it's possible to get it more than once? I suppose it would protect against shingles. Is it even offered in the UK?

I'd rather my children had natural immunity.

"ReallyTired, I'm certainly not against the idea of testing people as teenagers/young adults and vaccinating those who are still not immune because it has a higher risk of complications in adults. "

Would the financial cost of testing for anti bodies be more than simply giving them the jab? Prehaps health professionals could offer the jab to teens who parents believe that they haven't had chickenpox. The BCG is no longer universally given and the school health service uses a questionaire to decide who needs it.

Maybe pregnant women should be tested for varicella immunity at the same time as they are tested for rubella immunity. Pregnant women are a high risk group as the varicella zozer virus can damage the developing fetus.

I don't know anyone who has suffered serious long term implications other than mother who has had shingles.

I wouldn't like the idea of giving it to everyone just for the sake of convenience/as a cost saving exercise. I don't like the idea of unnecessary vaccination. Yes, testing pregnant women would be an option. I also think they should be testing them for whooping cough immunity then too rather than offering the jab to everyone as they do now.

My doctor tested me for rubella, chicken pox and toxoplasmosis immunity when I first mentioned babies. Humoral immunity to pertussis does not last very long afaik, so unless someone had had an horrendous cough within the past 3 years or so before trying to conceive, the test would be unlikely to show anything.

Bumbley - I maintain, it is not out of the ordinary at all. Two kids hospitalised, one horrendous case, one that left scars on the face for someone who has lived in four countries and has had kids in school or daycare centres for a combined 30 "kid years", I am probably on the low side with what I have seen. Our family is pretty "open" though when it comes to talking about "bodily" things, illnesses etc.

Why Catherina? Can they not get a 'natural booster' from being in contact with the disease without developing the full blown cough? I'm pretty sure that is the case.

It isn't just chicken pox complications I was talking about. You always seem to have a friend/friend's child who has suffered some horrific complication from whatever disease we happen to be discussing that has a vaccine available. I've never come across anything like that before and we have had our fair share of illnesses (some of them quite rare) in the extended family.

My poor DS got it really badly when he was only 7 weeks old. The virus ate through the cartilage in his ear, and he has the deepest scars I have ever seen.

If I could have my time again, I would vaccinate.

My DM has had shingles a few times, and it is awful, she has been left with constant pain from it - she missed being eligible for the shingles vaccination by a couple of weeks.

I wonder how long the shingles vaccination lasts for?