The chicken pox vaccine has proved 85 percent effective or about as good as experts expected in preventing the childhood disease, according to the most rigorous study yet of its real-world use.
"It works under conditions of community use. Now everyone needs to use it, and chicken pox will become a thing of the past," said Dr. Jane Seward, who runs the chicken pox vaccine program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings were published in today's New England Journal of Medicine.
Chicken pox is usually mild in children. But it can open the door to pneumonia and other serious infections. Until recently, nearly everyone came down with the disease. Chicken pox was blamed for about 100 deaths a year in the United States. Each year brought about 4 million cases.
The injected vaccine made from live but weakened copies of the virus was introduced six years ago. Since then, researchers at Yale and Columbia universities studied 591 children at 15 pediatric medical practices around New Haven, Conn. The vaccine, which is recommended for most children 12 to 18 months old, was 85 percent effective overall. It worked especially well in warding off the more severe cases, where it was 97 percent effective.
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