EPGA and chicken pox

[sarahdollygirl]

Hi all!

The person we share a house with plans to spend christmas with her family. Her grandson now has chicken pox! How long does that stay infectious and can she bring it back to me in the form of shingles, which, I imagine, would not be good!

She is about to cancel her plans which I don't want her to do unecessarily.

Any advice??!!

[vivdunstan Volunteer]

Chickenpox is incredibly infectious, being airborne. It is infectious from 2 days before the rash appears until they have all crusted over.

Normally if the lady has had chickenpox before she won’t catch it again. But sometimes people do catch it again, especially if they are immunosuppressed. You, for example, could easily catch chickenpox from her.

You cannot catch shingles from anyone. Shingles is when the old chickenpox virus trapped in your nerves reactivates. But people with shingles can infect other people with chickenpox. And people with chickenpox can pass that on too.

Please be very careful. I ended up in hospital with chickenpox in 1998, and was lucky to survive. It can easily kill immunosuppressed adults. Later I had shingles twice, when my previous chickenpox infection reactivated,

[PMRpro]

The child is infectious until all the blisters have scabbed over. Takes a week or so usually. When did his first blister appear? They are most infectious in the "cold" period of CP, the couple of days before the first blister appears and then it gets less and less infectious as time goes on.

Have you had CP in the past? You can't catch shingles - you can develop it if you have had CP in the past. The same applies to her - has she had CP in the past? If not, she won't develop shingles. But she COULD catch CP - and could bring it back to you. She can't bring it back to you via shingles but it all depends on whether she has had CP in the past or has had the CP vaccination.

When you have had CP the virus doesn't disappear from the body entirely, it retreats into the nervous system. Something at a later date can have an effect on the immune system and the virus wakes up and migrates to particular nerve endings where it can cause the shingles symptoms. If someone has shingles then it is theoretically possible to catch CP from the fluid in the shingles blisters - and it is thought that someone with shingles CAN shed virus too but not as much as wth CP.

Does that make sense?

[Chris-Bromsgrove]

I understand it is possible with weakened immune systems to loose your immunity to the chickenpox virus. Your immunity can be checked through a blood test. I had this done a few years ago when I was potentially exposed to the virus from my grandchildren. Thankfully I still had immunity.

[sarahdollygirl]

Thank you everybody! Very helpful of you allHave a safe healthy christmas

[Denverfan]

I have MPA. My wife was diagnosed with shingles a week ago and I contacted my vasculitis specialist for advice on what I should do.

His advice was that I couldn't catch it from her, or anyone else, but I might catch chicken pox unless I had antibodies. Fortunately he was able to check back to the many tests he did before I started cyclophosphamide infusions in 2018 and was able to confirm that I do have antibodies. He said I should be OK, and didn't recommend any further precautions.

Suggest you speak to your specialist like I did. There might be information on chicken pox antibodies on your file. I believe it is one of the standard tests that are done before treatment for ANCA vasculitis is started.

Hope this helps. Good luck.