Chicken pox & shingles

[3lilpunkins]

Are you more likely to shingles if you do or if you don't get chicken pox?

[mambera]

Originally Posted by 3lilpunkins

Are you more likely to shingles if you do or if you don't get chicken pox?

nak

You cannot possibly have shingles without previously having had the CP.

CP virus stays dormant forever in the spinal nerve roots.

Shingles occurs when the dormant virus reactivates, typically many years after the original episode of active CP.

[gentlemango]

If you don't. The vaccine protects against shingles but the disease does not.

Otoh the Chicken pox vax is causing a shingles epidemic because if you got the pox naturally, like all senior citizens these days, you need to be constantly re exposed to the pox to keep your immune system suppressing the dormant virus in your system. Now that kids don't get the pox, seniors are not exposed. So they are coming down w/ shingles a lot right now.

In a way the vax is causing more shingles but for your own kid, getting the vax prevents shingles.

That is not a reason to get the vax imho. I know someone who had shingles and it was not a big deal disease. A little itchy that's all.

[mama1803]

Originally Posted by gentlemango

If you don't. The vaccine protects against shingles but the disease does not.

Otoh the Chicken pox vax is causing a shingles epidemic because if you got the pox naturally, like all senior citizens these days, you need to be constantly re exposed to the pox to keep your immune system suppressing the dormant virus in your system. Now that kids don't get the pox, seniors are not exposed. So they are coming down w/ shingles a lot right now.

In a way the vax is causing more shingles but for your own kid, getting the vax prevents shingles.

That is not a reason to get the vax imho. I know someone who had shingles and it was not a big deal disease. A little itchy that's all.

Are you saying the chicken pox vax prevents the shingles? Or are you saying the shingles vax prevents the shingles in those who have already had the chicken pox?

It is incorrect to say the chicken pox vax prevents shingles.

[gentlemango]

Yes, that is what I am saying. Children who received the chicken pox vax were less likely to get shingles later on than children who received natural immunity via the chicken pox disease.

Zoster Vaccine Live: Shingles Prevention Study, CDC.

The incidence of zoster after immunization with live attenuated varicella vaccine. New England Journal of Medicine.

If you read the articles claiming that chicken pox vax increases the risk of shingles, they are talking about the risk of shingles in un vaccinated adults. Because of the lack of exposure to children w/ wild pox. On an individual case, getting the vax is protective against shingles.

[Deborah]

You mean they magically discovered a form of the chickenpox virus which will not linger in the nerves and cannot be reactivated later in life? I'm hugely impressed, but somewhat dubious. Especially as I know of some children who got chickenpox from the vaccine--which means that the virus has enough oomph to occasionally cause the actual illness.

[gentlemango]

I know it is difficult to accept, but that is what the peer-reviewed scientific data so far indicates. Children who get the varicella vax are less likely to get shingles than children who get the chicken pox disease naturally.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1731286/

http://kids.emedtv.com/varicella-vac...-used-for.html

http://www.vzvfoundation.org/chickenq&a.html

http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/news/in...varicella.html

[Cristiaz]

I think the studies are bogus and just a way to get parents to vax against cp.

[gentlemango]

Well . . . okay. These are peer-reviewed studies published in the most academically rigorous medical journals in the world. You can examine the methodology and data for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

This isn't some corrupt gov't agency that routinely ignores scientific findings like the FDA or something. It's actual medical research.

Imho there are many reasons to be against chicken pox vax. But disbelieving the actual research isn't one of them. We need to be able to take an honest look at the pros and the cons in order to make informed decisions. Imho choosing to ignore medical research does not appropriately equip you with the tools needed for informed choice.

[kiara7]

The pox vax is about 14 years old. At most the children who received are what 20-25. Let's have this conversation when they are 60 or so.
Children never got shingles. As the vax wears off, and they get no natural boosters, then we'll see....

[gentlemango]

That's why the study published in the NEJM done on children with leukemia is significant. Leukemia patients do get shingles because their immune systems are compromised, creating a hospitable environment for shingles to flare up even during childhood. The study was conclusive that children who had received the vax were much less likely to have a shingles flare up than the children who had received natural immunity via the disease (with randomly selected groups, with the same number of children in each pool, ~4% of vaxxed leukemic children got shingles vs. ~15% of children who had natural immunity).

[kiara7]

Ok, all your links just talk about pox, shingles and vax. I didn't see anything specific to preventing shingles except for vaccinations from cradle to grave. That's not really "preventing" shingles. With that logic, wild pox prevented shingles too, yk?

[gentlemango]

Yeah, it did. The delivery system of the vax seems to do a better job of keeping shingles at bay than natural immunity but the reason everyone doesn't get shingles is because your immune system naturally beats it down whenever you're exposed to pox in the wild. The vax gets the edge but shingles wasn't a huge problem anyway, until the vax started screwing things up.

The chicken pox vax was one of the stupider vaxes to be introduced. It needs boosters so there will be hundreds of thousands of un boostered, chicken pox vulnerable, young adults circulating in society. Young adults don't get boosters. Many of them will get the disease with serious complications at that age.

All pox immunity wears off over time, natural and vaxxed. Didn't used to be a problem because there were always kids with pox around, so pox exposure was everywhere to give you a natural booster every so often. Now all kids are vaxxed so there's no more wild exposure. That means that even kids who got the disease naturally will lose their immunity and need boosters as teens and adults.

It is producing a wave of shingles in the elderly because it's not circulating in the wild anymore.

The only motivation was to save WOH parents money so they wouldn't have to miss work when their kids got the pox.

Stupid vaccine. Now it's nearly universal so there's no going back. Unvaxxed kids get the worst of it, thanks to all the vaccinated kids. Getting the natural disease at this point gives a slightly worse quality of immunity, and there are no natural exposure boosters anymore so they will need vax boosters as adults just like the vaxxed kids, they have a higher risk of shingles as an adult, and none of this would have been a problem if it weren't for the vax.

[MCatLvrMom2A&X]

Originally Posted by gentlemango

I know it is difficult to accept, but that is what the peer-reviewed scientific data so far indicates. Children who get the varicella vax are less likely to get shingles than children who get the chicken pox disease naturally.

Huh then why are so many kids developing shingles within a few years or less of the vax? When in the past shingles where only found in older people and very rarely in children.

I have seen this first hand in my dd's school. The only kids to get shingles where those vaxed for cp.

[gentlemango]

(double post, sorry)

[gentlemango]

Cite? I haven't seen any evidence that children in the last 10 years account for any more of the 5% of shingles cases that they always have.

[MCatLvrMom2A&X]

I am just telling you what I have seen in my dd's public grade school with my own eyes and ears.

[Deborah]

I went and looked at some of the articles and did a PubMed search of my own.

What I concluded (based on limited evidence):

the vaccine can linger in the body and cause shingles, just as the regular virus can linger and cause shingles...

the studies show less shingles in children who have been vaxed than in children who had CP...

we don't have a long time horizon here...

so far none of these viral vaccines have worked out as expected for the long-run (mumps vaccine turned out to be less effective, CP vaccine turned out to need a booster, measles vaccine turned out to need a booster, no virus vaccine has demonstrated lifelong immunity, etc.), so I'm pretty doubtful that the shingles results will hold up well. One study (sorry, didn't grab the link) had a puzzling increase of shingles in teenagers who had been vaccinated. They had no idea what might be causing this.

The best I can say is that the CP vaccine may, for some children, delay the onset of shingles in childhood. But shingles in childhood was always very rare so this doesn't seem to be a huge benefit.

[13Sandals]

Originally Posted by gentlemango

I know it is difficult to accept, but that is what the peer-reviewed scientific data so far indicates. Children who get the varicella vax are less likely to get shingles than children who get the chicken pox disease naturally.

that is HI-larious.

chicken pox vaccines began with US children in the 1990s - so I would say that it is a bit hard to tell at this point whether shingles will be lessened in that population when they hit the age shingles usually occurs - namely over 60. that study has not been done because the first vaccinated generation is only 20 right now!

this is like the cervical cancer vaccine folks saying the vax will prevent cancer, even though non of the vaccine recipients have yet reached the age cervical cancer usually strikes.

here is a nice link rejecting the conclusions from the recent CDC study that the cp vax protects from shingles: http://www.prlog.org/10394035-cdc-ce...propaganda.htm

Basically, they are saying that the cp vaccine increases shingles risk in all populations. a clear case where anyone taking the vaccine is adding disease burden to the population.

[Frootloop]

Originally Posted by MCatLvrMom2A&X

I am just telling you what I have seen in my dd's public grade school with my own eyes and ears.

My daughter received the vax as a toddler (I forgot the specific age it's recommended) and just shy of 3 months later, she had shingles on her side in a line from her spine to her ribcage. This was approximately 11 years ago. She had never gotten chicken pox before this. At first, her ped. denied that it could have anything at all to do with the vax, but later discovered that it COULD happen.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't herpes zoster listed as a side effect on the vaccine insert? I KNOW I've read that here before.