Chickenpox

Chickenpox is known to be one of the "classic" childhood diseases. This is because most children have suffered from chickenpox at a given time in their lives. This disease also happens to be one of the most contagious diseases around. THe virus isn't only limited to children.  Adults can suffer from it as well.

A virus called varicella-zoster is the culprit that causes chickenpox. This virus is part of the herpes family. Because of this it can cause herpes zoster (shingles) in adults.

Once infected, the child or adult can develop hundreds of very itchy blisters filled with liquid that burst and form crusts.

However, because of the introduction of the chickenpox vaccine, this disease is becoming more and more less common these days.

Chickenpox Transmission

This highly contagious diseases is spread by direct contact, droplet transmission swell as airborne transmission.

A small percentage of children who have been vaccinated, develop a mild case of chickenpox. They do however recover very quickly and also have much milder symptoms, thus only develop a few dozen blisters at most. These post-vaccine cases are still highly contagious.

This virus usually remains in your body for your lifetime and is kept in check by the immune system. Shingles can occur in about 10% of adults when the virus re-emerges during periods of stress.

Chickenpox blisters usually appear 10 to 21 days later from the time the person gets infected.  The sufferer then becomes contagious 1 to 2 days before they start breaking out with blisters, and remain contagious while the un-crusted blisters remain.

Most cases, chickenpox will only infect children younger than the age of ten. Chickenpox tends to be worse for children who have other skin problems, such as eczema or recent sunburn.

This disease is usually mild, but there are rare occasions when serious complications can arise. 

Some of the worst cases of chickenpox have been seen in children that have taken steroids (for example, to treat asthma) during the incubation period, before they have developed any symptoms.

Chickenpox Complications

Some of the serious complications that chickenpox can cause are:

Congenital infection of the fetes. This usually occurs if a woman acquires chickenpox during pregnancy.

Newborns are at risk of severe infection if they are exposed to the disease and their mothers are not immune.

If the sufferer scratches the blisters, a secondary infection of the blisters may occur, and can also lead to scarring.

Encephalitis is a serious, but rare complication of chickenpox.

Reye's syndrome, pneumonia, myocarditis, and transient arthritis are other possible (but very rare) complications of chickenpox.

Cerebellar ataxia may appear during the recovery phase or later.  This is very rare, and the disease is characterized by a very unsteady walk.

Read on to find out more about the symptoms, treatment and prevention of the chickenpox virus.

• Chickenpox symptoms
  chickenpox symptoms can be spotted very easily
  
  
• Treating chickenpox
  treating chickenpox is not possible by using antibiotics
  
  
• Prevention of chickenpox
  prevention of chickenpox is achieved through the chickenpox vaccine