Chickenpox or chicken pox is a highly contagious illness caused by primary infection with varicella zoster virus (VZV).[1] It usually starts with vesicular skin rash mainly on the body and head rather than at the periphery and becomes itchy, raw pockmarks, which mostly heal without scarring.
Chicken pox is an airborne disease spread easily through coughing or sneezing of ill individuals or through direct contact with secretions from the rash. A person with chickenpox is infectious from one to five days before the rash appears.[2] The contagious period continues for 4 to 5 days after the appearance of the rash, or until all lesions have crusted over. Immunocompromised patients are probably contagious during the entire period new lesions keep appearing. Crusted lesions are not contagious. [3]
It takes from 10 to 21 days after contact with an infected person for someone to develop chickenpox.
Chickenpox is often heralded by a prodrome of myalgia, nausea, fever, headache, sore throat, pain in both ears, complaints of pressure in head or swollen face, and malaise in adolescents and adults, while in children the first symptom is usually the development of a papular rash, followed by development of malaise, fever (a body temperature of 38 °C (100 °F), but may be as high as 42 °C (108 °F) in rare cases), and anorexia. Typically, the disease is more severe in adults. [4] Chickenpox is rarely fatal, although it is generally more severe in adult males than in adult females or children. Pregnant women and those with a suppressed immune system are at highest risk of serious complications. Chicken pox is believed to be the cause of one third of stroke cases in children.[5] The most common late complication of chicken pox is shingles, caused by reactivation of the varicella zoster virus decades after the initial episode of chickenpox.
Chickenpox has been observed in other primates, including chimpanzees[6] and gorillas.[7]
The disease is not related in any way to chickens; the name uses "chicken" in the sense of "weak" or "cowardly" (i.e., a "wimpier" version of smallpox).[8]
