| Children’s chickenpox vaccination a
threat to adults Kate Foster kfoster@scotsman.com
PLANS to vaccinate children against chickenpox
could lead to millions of adults developing shingles, scientists
warned yesterday.
Health officials in Britain are considering whether to include a jab for the infection in the childhood vaccination programme. The chickenpox virus remains in the body and can flare up later in life as shingles - a painful rash which mainly affects older people. But researchers say that, for adults, exposure to children with chickenpox can act like a booster vaccine against shingles. Adults living with children are less likely to develop shingles than those who do not. John Edmunds, a researcher for Public Health Laboratory Service, in London, said: "Vaccination looks good in terms of costs if you just look at the economic effect of chickenpox. "But shingles has been ignored, and if you include that, the costs and benefits may not be very good at all." At present, a quarter of chickenpox veterans go on to develop shingles, usually after the age of 60. But if all children are vaccinated for chickenpox, adults who have had the disease will not be exposed to enough of the virus to prevent full-blown shingles later, according to the research in New Scientist. Dr Edmunds and his team calculate that, over the first 50 years, vaccinating a population the size of the US would save 5,000 children from dying from the complications of chickenpox, but an extra 5,000 people over 60 would die from the complications of shingles, and there would be 21 million extra cases. Vaccination against chickenpox is not widespread in Europe because the disease is regarded as fairly harmless, but in the US, where vaccination was introduced in 1995, chickenpox cases have fallen by 80 per cent. Dr Michael Oxman, of California, concedes chickenpox vaccination could lead to a surge in shingles, but one remedy could be to also vaccinate older people to boost their immunity to shingles. Dr Oxman is heading a study of 40,000 Americans over 60 to be completed in 2004 to see whether this works. A new four-in-one jab which combines the chickenpox virus with the contentious MMR vaccine could soon be available in the UK. The drugs company GlaxoSmithKline is submitting a "superjab" vaccine against measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox for approval in Britain. The new inoculation could be in use as early as 2003. |
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