Chicken Pox Side Effects in an Older Adult

Chicken pox is a highly contagious disease caused by the varicella-zoster virus. Most people contract the disease in their childhood, but adults who catch chicken pox face a much higher risk of death and complications.

Symptoms

• Early symptoms of chicken pox include headache, fever and sore throat. After one or two days, small, itchy blisters that look like insect bites will form. The blisters last for five to seven days.

Risk Factors

• Chicken pox infections are generally mild and free of complications for healthy children. Groups at risk for serious complications include people with compromised immune systems, infants, pregnant women, teenagers and adults.

Complications

• Adults are more likely to die of chicken pox than children who catch the disease, according to the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. The most common complication is bacterial skin rash, but in some cases it may spread to internal organs and cause inflammation of the brain. In pregnant women, chicken pox increases the risk of serious birth defects.

Shingles

• One serious complication of chicken pox for adults is shingles, which are painful blisters caused by the re-emergence of the dormant varicella-zoster virus. Shingles affects one in 10 people who have had chicken pox, according to the Mayo Clinic, and is more common in the elderly and immunocompromised persons.

Prevention

• According to the National Foundation of Infectious Diseases, the chicken pox vaccine, when taken in two doses, is nearly 100 percent successful at preventing this disease. (A single dose is 70 to 90 percent effective.) The shingles vaccine, recommended for people over 60, is 50 percent effective at preventing shingles.