The answers to all of their questions are given in the following lines.



The most common question about chickenpox asks what it means. It is good to know that chickenpox is a rash caused by the virus called varicella-zoster. Chickenpox is a highly contagious problem that usually occurs in childhood. Once a person is infected it will take between two to three weeks for the symptoms to appear. In rare cases the adults are affected by this problem. In adults, this problem might lead to severe complications such as pneumonia. It is also known that in adults, chickenpox occurs especially in persons with weak immune systems.

Statistics confirm the property of being highly contagious by telling us that more than 3 million cases of chickenpox occur each year only in United States. Another statistic review says that most of the patients, about 90%, are younger than 12 years.

Another frequently asked question refers to the symptoms that are developed in chickenpox. We may say that these symptoms vary from case to case, from one individual to another. The most common symptoms of chickenpox are mild fever, backache, headache, sore throat, rash and blisters filled with fluids. It was noticed that some individuals experience all these symptoms while others experience only one or two.

Hearing about contagious property of chickenpox most of the people want to know the ways of transmission. They should know that chickenpox is mostly transmitted through air. If a person that never had chickenpox got in contact with an infected person there are many chances for him to get infected. After the virus is inhaled he enters the lungs and travels to the skin, through the blood. There it causes the rash typical for chickenpox.

The incubation period for chickenpox is between 10 and 20 days. Before the rash appears the patients develop the most common symptoms such as fever, headache, swollen glands and often flu like symptoms.

It is also good to know that patients are contagious from 2 days before the onset of the rash until the blisters have crusted.

A wanted answer is whether chickenpox can be prevented or not. This is a positive answer too and is good to know that the easiest way to prevent chickenpox is to get vaccinated. Even so vaccination proved to be effective in about 70 to 90 % of the cases but those who were vaccinated and still developed chickenpox the symptoms are milder.