Children whose parents refuse to let them be
vaccinated for chickenpox are nine times as likely as vaccinated
children to develop chickenpox that requires medical attention,
researchers reported Monday.
Although the conclusion may seem self-evident, it reflects a growing problem with childhood immunizations, said epidemiologist
the lead author of the report in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Immunizations have been so successful, he said, that some parents are
becoming more concerned about the risks of vaccines than they are about
the illness.
“Vaccines are becoming victims of their own success,” he said.
The vaccine for chickenpox, formally known as
varicella, is one parents are most likely to skip because they believe
the disease is the least serious preventable childhood illness. But
before the varicella vaccine was introduced in 1995, about 4 million
U.S. children contracted chickenpox every year, with 10,000
hospitalizations and 100 deaths. Those figures have subsequently been
reduced by more than 80 percent.
Chickenpox is characterized by a high fever, an
itchy rash, red spots or blisters all over the body, and malaise. It
also renders children more susceptible to other infections and can
leave permanent scarring.
Complications can be especially severe in children
with compromised immune systems due to AIDS, certain other diseases and
anti-rejection treatments after transplants. Such children frequently
cannot be immunized, and the best way to prevent them from falling ill
is to inoculate other children in the community, blocking the spread of
the disease.
Glanz and his colleagues studied the electronic
health records of 86,993 children ages 1 through 8 who were members of
the managed-care group Kaiser Permanente Colorado, identifying 133
physician-confirmed cases of varicella. They then compared these
children to 493 others, matched for age and gender, who were not
infected.
Many of the varicella cases occurred in children too
young to be vaccinated, in children who had recently been vaccinated or
when it could not be confirmed whether the parents refused vaccination.
The researchers concluded, however, that seven of
the cases, about 5 percent, were in children whose parents refused
vaccination, and that those children were nine times more likely to
contract the disease than those in the age- and gender-matched control
group. One of them had a severe complication, a streptococcal infection
that led to hospitalization.
Although the numbers were small, the results were statistically significant.
“The common perception among parents is that they
don’t believe chickenpox is a serious illness, and they don’t believe
their children are at risk,” Glanz concluded. “This study shows that
they are wrong on both counts.”
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(c) 2010, Los Angeles Times.
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