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Second hand chickenpox exposure : PLEASE HELP!
Pie wrote:
My wife drove some visiting relatives to Disneyland - During middle of the 2 hour drive she found out one of the guests was down with adult chickenpox!!! I know, what a way to thank your hosts -- Lock yourself in a full car for a four hour ride and not tell them till later. Yep, seems pretty crappy to me. Anyway, while my wife has had chickenpox before, I have never had it and I am just going nuts wondering the odds of me getting it through her. Fortunately, pretty low. She will need to have ay least a mild form of the disease to pass it on to you. Of course, it is possible for her to get the mild form of the disease so the chances are not zero. It seems like they were driving around in the car for a total of four hours so she has certainly been exposed to it, I would guess. I am just wondering if there is anything I can do at this point to minimize my exposure (other than staying with my parents for the next two weeks). The incubation period averages about 14 days but has a range of 7-21 and the infectious period starts about 2-3 days before the fever. So to use this method you will need to leave the house about one week after her exposure and stay away for two after that. Taking acyclovir(Zovirax), an antiviral drug that is cheap and has minimnal side effects, has not been studied much but would make sense. Some authors would recommend taking a more expensive newer drug, valacyclovir (Valtrex). Advising dosage would be difficult but the drugs cause so few side effects that I think if one was going to guess it makes sense to use the full treatment doses. http://www.aafp.org/afp/970915ap/tips8.html http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m.../article.jhtml Another possibility would be to get the immunization. There is some evidence in children that it is effective if given within 7-14 days after exposure. If course, there is a risk of getting mild disease fromt he vaccine as well. The other wrnkle is that in people over the age of 13 years two shots are given at least a month apart so it is not clear how well this would work in you. For future exposures getting the vaccine might not be a bad idea. -- CBI, MD |
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