Word: pox
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...POX ON CHICKEN POX...
...Chicken pox is not a severe threat to most children, but it can be fatal to newborns and to thousands of youngsters whose natural immunity has been weakened by chemotherapy for diseases such as leukemia. Until recently, the only protection against chicken pox was an antiserum derived from the blood of patients recovering from the virus, since antibody levels are unusually high during convalescence. Locating such people is costly and difficult, so supplies were always scarce...
Reye Syndrome. This malady primarily attacks children between the ages of five and eleven. No cause has been identified, but the syndrome has been linked to viral illness, commonly striking its young victims as they recover from chicken pox or influenza. The symptoms, described by Australian Pathologist R.D.K. Reye in 1963, are severe vomiting, followed by lethargy and later by personality changes, convulsions, coma and even death. The syndrome is rare. Last year fewer than 600 cases occurred in the U.S., mostly during the flu months of January, February and March. Both the public and physicians are becoming more familiar...
...viruses after which the disease is named come in some 70 varieties, most of them noninfectious to humans. Those harmful to people cause birth defects, chicken pox and shingles, and mononucleosis (the "kissing disease"). The ones implicated in venereal disease are herpes simplex types 1 and 2. The first type triggers fever blisters, or cold sores, around the mouth: it is also an agent in various eye ailments that can, if untreated, lead to blindness. The second usually shows up in the genital area of both sexes, and sometimes on the thighs and buttocks. Both types can be transmitted between...
...years since, Merigan and his Stanford team have successfully used IF to treat shingles and chicken pox in cancer patients. In other studies, IF has prevented the recurrence of CMV, a chronic viral disease that sometimes endangers newborn babies and kidney- transplant patients. Israeli doctors have also used IF eyedrops to combat a contagious and incapacitating viral eye infection commonly known as "pink eye." Researchers are now trying a combination of IF and the antiviral drug ara-A in patients with chronic hepatitis B infections. Interferon investigators have high hopes that the drug will be equally active against other viral...