New data shows that the chicken pox vaccine (Varivax®) prevents illness even better than we knew.

Death from chicken pox declined 88%, from 4.1 in ten million people to just 0.5 per ten million.  The study by the CDC was published in the August 2011 issue of the AAP journal Pediatrics, comparing death rates in the early ’90′s (before introduction of the vaccine) to the mid-2000′s.

This improvement occurred with a single injection.  Subsequently, a 2-dose regimen has been introduced, because other research has shown that 5% of children don’t achieve proper immunity to chickenpox from a single injection.

So we can expect even better numbers, the next time the numbers are run!

 

–  David Epstein, MD