>Chickenpox is a trivial illness for people with normal immune systems.  =

This is true if you live in a generally clean environment.  Some children
in Mali die from chicken pox because the lesions get infected by bacteria
in the environment.  The child may linger for months with a hundred red
oozing sores and then finally succumb.

>It can be life-threatening to mothers in late pregnancy, and if mother =
>breaks out in pox less than 48 hours before she gives birth or less than =
>5 days afterwards, the baby is also at high risk.

I thought the big concern for pregnant women and chicken pox was earlier in
the pregnancy.  I vividly remember seeing a slide in a microbiology lecture
in grad school showing a newborn whose mother had had chicken pox early in
the pregnancy.  The child's limbs were permanently stuck together and stuck
to the body because, according to the professor, the baby's skin had
lesions during the pregnancy (the fetus got chicken pox too) and then as
they healed, the skin just grew together with whatever else it was touching
at the time.  So the thighs grew together, the arms grew to the ribcage,
etc.  It was horrifying.  It also prevents the limbs and body from growing
normally in size from that point on in the pregnancy.

So -- is this true, or was this some bizarre story we were told?


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.                         email:
[log in to unmask]
Anthropology Department                               phone: (409) 845-5256
Texas A&M University                                    fax: (409) 845-4070
College Station, TX  77843-4352
http://www.prairienet.org/laleche/dettwyler.html

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