Steroids and chicken pox are a bad combination for young children
by admin ~ December 20th, 2009.
Children being administered with steroids and exposed to the virus of chicken pox run a high risk of experiencing a more severe form of virus, as per pediatric oncologists at Brenner Children’s Hospital, part of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.
A new research published in the October issue of Pediatrics has revealed that young children who are undergoing steroid therapies for ailments such as leukemia are at a higher risk of contracting a severe form of chicken pox, which may cause death.
From News-Medical.Net:
McLean and his colleagues studied 697 patients with acute leukemia over a nine-year period. About 16 percent or 110 patients contracted chicken pox. Of those 110 patients, 54 had severe disease, including two deaths. Of the patients whose chicken pox was diagnosed within three weeks of taking steroids, 70 percent had severe infection whereas only 44 percent of those who had not received steroid therapy within three weeks had severe infection. Although the study was limited to patients with leukemia, the findings may apply to other conditions for which steroids are used, McLean said.
“One of the things we need to remember to ask before we prescribe steroid treatment is whether the child has had a recent exposure to chicken pox,” McLean said. “If so, we recommend waiting until the incubation period has passed before beginning steroid therapy.”
Steroids are a common and highly successful treatment for many childhood cancers, McLean said.
“We just need to make sure we don’t mix the two,” he added. “Steroids and the chicken pox virus don’t go together. They are a bad combination.”
Thomas McLean, a pediatric oncologist at Brenner Children’s Hospital, remarked that steroid used in leukemia treatment among children has the potential of suppressing the immune system and when the child gets exposed to the chicken pox virus (varicella virus) at the same time, a severe form of chicken pox virus may be experienced.
Category: Anabolic Steroids | Tags: chicken pox, leukemia, steroid therapy, steroids