All about the smallpox vaccination: when is vaccination done and does it leave a scar?

Features of the infection

Chickenpox, or chickenpox, is the most contagious (contagious) infection known to mankind. Its contagiousness reaches 100%. This means that all people who have contact with the patient or carrier become infected. The situation is aggravated by the fact that in many cases the disease is asymptomatic, and a person, without knowing it, can become a source of infection for weakened people, who as a result may experience severe complications, even death. The most severe forms of chickenpox are hemorrhagic, bullous and gangrenous.

The risks of complications are high in patients with immunodeficiencies, including those due to HIV infection, cytostatic therapy, and even steroid therapy in the treatment of asthma. Chickenpox is also dangerous during pregnancy. In the first trimester of gestation, the disease can lead to miscarriages and severe fetal malformations. No less danger arises when the mother falls ill a few days before giving birth. In this case, there is a risk of developing a congenital form of chickenpox, which is characterized by severe disease and high mortality.

What risks are associated with the chickenpox vaccine?

A vaccine, like any medicine, can cause serious problems, such as severe allergic reactions. However, the risk that vaccination will cause serious harm or death is negligible.

The chickenpox vaccine is much safer than getting chickenpox. For most people, the chickenpox vaccine does not cause any complications. In general, reactions are more likely to occur after the first dose than after the second.

Minor complications

• Soreness or swelling at the injection site (affects about 1 in 5 children and 1 in 3 teenagers and adults).
• Fever (1 in 10 people or less).
• Mild rash within 1 month after vaccination (1 in 25 people). It is possible that vaccinated people could infect other family members, but this is extremely rare.

Moderate violations

• Convulsions (twitching or fixed gaze) caused by high fever (extremely rare).

Severe violations

• Pneumonia (extremely rare)

Other serious problems have been reported following chickenpox vaccination, including severe brain reactions and low blood cell levels. They are so rare that experts find it difficult to say whether they were caused by the vaccine. If yes, then this happens extremely rarely.

Note. The first dose of MMRV vaccine causes a rash and a higher fever than MMR and chickenpox vaccine when given separately. A rash occurred in about 1 in 20 people, and a fever in about 1 in 5 people. Seizures caused by fever also occurred more frequently after MMRV was given. They usually occur 5 to 12 days after the first dose.

Why do children need to be vaccinated against chickenpox?

Chickenpox is caused by the Varicella-Zoster virus, which can linger in the body in nerve trunks and ganglia and cause shingles in humans in adulthood. It affects the nervous system and threatens paralysis, impaired sensitivity, and impaired vision. Ringworm is accompanied by skin rashes in the form of blisters, and the person is the source of infection.

The chickenpox vaccination is recommended for children, because there are cases in which the disease is accompanied by an increase in body temperature to 39 ̊C, ulceration of the mucous membranes of the eyes and genitals, and stomatitis. In infants, the disease can lead to pneumonia and chickenpox encephalitis and is life-threatening.

Smallpox in Russia

There are no written references to this disease in our country until the middle of the 17th century. However, this does not mean that it did not exist. This is evidenced by a dozen names of ancient noble families, such as the Ryabovs, Ryabtsevs or Shchedrins.

By the middle of the 18th century, smallpox had already penetrated all Russian regions, right up to Kamchatka. The disease affected all layers of Russian society, sparing no one. In particular, in 1730, 14-year-old Emperor Peter II died from smallpox infection. Peter the Third also suffered from it, and until his tragic death he suffered from the consciousness of his deformity, which was a consequence of smallpox.

Cost of vaccination

*Preliminary inspection is paid separately.

Request a call

Sign up for vaccination

Immunization is not required if the child has already had chickenpox. Otherwise, it is recommended to get the chickenpox vaccine.

The optimal age for starting vaccination for children who have not been ill is 1 year. The vaccine is administered twice with an interval of 6 weeks. In case of contact of an unvaccinated and previously unill child or adult with a patient with chickenpox, emergency prophylaxis with 1 dose of vaccine must be carried out within 72-96 hours after contact.

Infection with the Varicella-Zoster virus is not always accompanied by a characteristic clinical picture. In order to make sure that the child has not had chickenpox, you can take a blood test from a vein. It will show the presence/absence of antibodies to the virus.

Some people should not get the chickenpox vaccine or should wait

• The chickenpox vaccine should not be given if a person has ever had a life-threatening allergic reaction to a previous dose of chickenpox vaccine or to gelatin or the antibiotic neomycin.
• People with moderate or severe disease at the time of their scheduled vaccination are generally advised to delay chickenpox vaccination until they have recovered.
• Pregnant women should delay chickenpox vaccination until after their baby is born. Women should avoid pregnancy for 1 month after the chickenpox vaccine.
• Some people need to check with their doctor to see if they should get the chickenpox vaccine. These people include anyone who:
• has AIDS or another disease that affects the immune system;
• is being treated with drugs that affect the immune system, such as steroids, for 2 weeks or more;
• has any type of cancer;
• is being treated for cancer with radiation therapy or medications.
• People who have recently had a blood transfusion or who have received other blood products should ask their doctor when they can get the chickenpox vaccine.
• Consult your doctor for more details.

Chickenpox vaccines used

Immunization is carried out with the drug Varilrix. The chickenpox vaccine contains live, weakened viruses. Allowed for use in children 1 year and older. Used for emergency prevention of chickenpox (72–96 hours after exposure). For 100% protection against infection, you can get vaccinated twice with an interval of 2 months. Can be administered simultaneously with other vaccines (except BCG), but in different parts of the body. The drug is injected into the deltoid muscle of the shoulder or the anterolateral region of the thigh.

Ways to get rid of a scar after vaccination

Many people have marks on the left shoulder after vaccination. But the skin of different people differs - for some, vaccine spots heal quickly and are minimal in size, while others dream of getting rid of large and unsightly scars. This can be done today by peeling - grinding the top layer of skin. By the time the scar forms, the process of developing immunity is complete; removing the scar will not affect it. There are several methods to get rid of scars:

• mechanical grinding of the surface layers of the skin;
• laser peeling;
• chemical peeling with acids;
• phenol peeling.

The laser method is the safest, does not cause pain and has virtually no contraindications. This cleaning of the upper layers of skin is especially important for older people who have numerous large scars after vaccination against smallpox.

However, you should not remove vaccine marks on the shoulder if there is a congenital tendency to form keloid scars. It manifests itself in the formation of thick and rough growths in places of deep skin trauma. With this peculiarity of the body, small scars should not be touched in order to avoid the appearance of even larger scars in the same place. Masking a scar with a tattoo when keloid scars form is also not worth it.

source

Post-vaccination reactions

The chickenpox vaccine is easily tolerated and reactions to it are extremely rare. The following reactions were recorded:

1. Local:
   swelling;
2. compaction at the injection site;
3. hyperemia;
4. slight soreness.
5. Are common:
   temperature increase;
6. general malaise and weakness;
7. itchy skin;
8. soreness of the lymph nodes;
9. asymptomatic enlarged lymph nodes.

Post-vaccination complications:

1. Herpes zoster in a mild form.
2. Post-vaccination encephalitis.
3. Thrombocytopenia.
4. Joint pain.
5. Impaired skin sensitivity.

The risk of developing these complications is 1.5/100,000 doses administered. Infection with the vaccine strain virus was reported in 5 cases out of 56 million doses.

Resurrect the Killer

Specialists from the State Scientific Center for Virology and Biotechnology “Vector” of Rospotrebnadzor plan to complete clinical trials of a unique smallpox vaccine by the fall of this year. If they are successful, the Ministry of Health may register the drug within the same time frame, scientists expect. Izvestia sent a request to the Ministry of Health.

The vaccine has already passed all stages of preclinical studies, the center clarified. The first phase of clinical trials on 60 volunteers, which lasted two years, has also been completed. The second and third phases of clinical trials on 334 volunteers are currently underway.

As the director of the center, Rinat Maksyutov, explained to Izvestia, cases of human infection with closely related viruses have increased significantly in recent years.

Old new enemy

Photo: RIA Novosti/Grigory Sysoev

Five most important discoveries of virology

From the discovery of pathogens to the invention of vaccines

— These are cow and monkeypox viruses. Moreover, advances in synthetic biology in recent years demonstrate the possibility of synthesizing the variola virus artificially, the scientist said.

In 2021, a group of Canadian researchers managed to recreate the causative agent of the horsepox virus, the closest relative of black (natural) smallpox. The technology and techniques needed to recreate such viruses are already known, virologist David Evans from the University of Alberta in Edmonton told Science at the time.

“Did I increase the threat by showing how it’s done?” I do not know, maybe. However, the reality is that the threat never went away,” he said in an interview with Science.

How Japanese mothers demanded the Soviet vaccine

In Japan, in the 50s and 60s of the 20th century, a real tragedy unfolded: thousands of cases of polio were recorded in a small country. A live vaccine produced in the USSR could stop the epidemic. But for the Japanese government, registering and issuing permission to import medicine from the Soviet Union was an unthinkable precedent.

Then the mothers of children with polio took to the streets, demanding permission to import the Soviet vaccine. They achieved their goal: urgent import of the vaccine was organized. 20 million Japanese children were saved from the threat of the disease.

Based on this story, in 1988, director Alexander Mitta shot the Soviet-Japanese two-part film “Step” with Leonid Filatov and Komaki Kurihara in the lead roles. Oleg Tabakov, Elena Yakovleva, Vladimir Ilyin and Garik Sukachev played with them. His song “My Little Babe” is heard in the film.

According to the plot, it is 1959, there is an epidemic in Japan. The country's Salk vaccine is only 60 percent effective and is in short supply. Japanese woman Keiko, who lost her eldest son, wants to protect her younger son from polio at all costs and decides to go to the USSR to bring a new Soviet vaccine to Japan.

In the Soviet Union, Keino receives the vaccine for himself and buys another thousand doses for his compatriots, but it is confiscated at customs: according to Japanese law, any medicine imported into the country must undergo a lengthy inspection that takes two years. Japanese mothers stage protests and demand the import of the Soviet vaccine immediately, but this is prevented by the bureaucrats of both countries. Through the efforts of Keiko and other mothers on the one hand and the Soviet doctor Gusev on the other, it is possible to send the vaccine to Japan.

How Sklifosovsky opened a Pasteur station in Moscow

Before the discovery of vaccines by Louis Pasteur, rabies in Russia was fought with conspiracies, burning wounds with a hot iron, and other methods that had little to do with science. For example, in the 19th century, the Government Bulletin published an article “On the treatment of hydrophobia with a Russian bath.”

Pasteur's discovery in 1885 was a real salvation. People bitten by rabid animals flocked to Paris. Among the first to avoid the death of 2,500 people thanks to the vaccine were 16 of the 19 residents of the Smolensk province bitten by a wolf. Everyone could have survived, but the three were unlucky - they were late to receive help: the meeting of the city council in Bely, which was supposed to allocate them 16 thousand rubles for the trip, took place only on the third day after the disaster, the victims waited for another two days for a doctor to accompany them. In total, 44 people who had been bitten by rabid animals came to Pasteur from Russia - peasants from Smolensk, Oryol, Penza, Vladimir, Tver and Kostroma provinces.

The resolution of Alexander III was preserved in a letter from the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, who asked to allocate funds for these trips to France: “Receive 700 rubles from Taneyev. It is very advisable to send the most dangerous ones to Paris to Pasteur, who is very interested in the bites of a rabid wolf, since he has never had such a patient before.” Subsequently, the emperor donated about 100 thousand francs to the opening of the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

And Pasteur stations soon began to open all over the world, and Russia became one of the leading countries in this regard. The first vaccination station against rabies in the Russian Empire (and the second in the world) appeared in Odessa on June 11, 1886, and a month later the same one was created in Moscow. For its opening, Louis Pasteur sent his autographed portrait. It is still stored at the Moscow Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums named after I.I. Mechnikov, opened at its base. One of the initiators of the creation of the Moscow station was Nikolai Sklifosovsky.

An orphanage, a people's university and a pharmacy: what did Moscow philanthropists of past years do?

By 1912, there were already 28 Pasteur stations in Russia, and by 1938 in the USSR - 80 (not counting several hundred branches). The Moscow station became the leading center for combating rabies in the USSR. Thousands of lives have been saved since then by rabies vaccines.

“Everyone, from the elephant to the fly, needs to be vaccinated against jaundice.”

In the USSR, the vaccination campaign was going on everywhere. It also appeared on television - the 1966 cartoon “About the Hippopotamus Who Was Afraid of Vaccines” is widely known. According to the plot, the cowardly hippopotamus was the only one of the fairy-tale animals that escaped from the clinic. At first gray and cheerful, then white from fear of vaccination, the hippo turns yellow because he gets jaundice, and at the end of the film he blushes from shame for being afraid of the injection. The funny cartoon was watched by millions of Soviet children. What vaccinations did they have?

All those born after the war were vaccinated against tuberculosis, diphtheria and polio. Over time, vaccinations against whooping cough, tetanus, measles and mumps were added. Children born before 1979 were vaccinated against smallpox, but in 1980 smallpox was considered eradicated worldwide and the vaccine was discontinued.

In the late 1990s, a two-shot rubella vaccine, a booster against measles, and a hepatitis B vaccine were introduced into the national calendar, and in the 2010s, the Haemophilus influenzae vaccine for children at risk and the pneumococcal vaccine were added.

Mass flu vaccinations began in Russia due to the threat of a pandemic in 2009–2010. Vaccination is now included in the national calendar and is provided free of charge in government medical organizations. Last year, according to Rospotrebnadzor, 49 percent of the country’s population—70.8 million people—was vaccinated. Doctors stated that the incidence of influenza has decreased by almost 200 times since 1997 - from 5173.8 cases per 100 thousand people to 26.5.

How candy became medicine

In the 1950s–1960s, anti-polio candies were produced at the Marat confectionery factory.

Mikhail Chumakov was looking for the best way to deliver the vaccine to the intestines - so that the beneficial virus would not be lost in the mouth, where it does not multiply, but would rather reach its destination. As a result, he came up with the idea of ​​​​making the vaccine in the form of pills. And already in March 1959, the Marat factory (in 1971 it was merged with the Rot Front factory, and in 2002 they became part of the United Confectioners) commissioned the Chumakov Institute to produce anti-poliodrage - capsules made of sugar and starch syrup with wax. coating. The candies weighed one gram and were stored in the refrigerator.

Children loved them, and qualified medical personnel were no longer even required to administer the vaccine.

Such vaccine candies were produced at Marat's factory until the end of the 1960s. By October 20, 1968—Food Industry Workers' Day—the Ogonyok magazine published an article entitled “Candy Against Disease.” It published a photo of the workers and said that the most interesting product of the factory is candy-medicines, and the factory is a monopolist in the production of anti-polio pills.

Four generations

The new drug is a weakened live vaccinia virus (the virus used to make the human smallpox vaccine) with six virulence genes turned off. As a result of the modification, scientists obtained a genetic composition that optimally forms immunity and at the same time has a high safety profile.

The vaccine created in , belongs to the fourth generation of vaccines. These are intelligent genetically engineered vaccines in which developers can purposefully change properties.

For the first generation of vaccines (used in the USSR), the pathogen was developed mainly on the skin of calves, a WHO adviser on the study of smallpox and monkeypox viruses, deputy director of the WHO Collaborating Center for the Diagnosis of Orthopoxvirus Infections and deputy director of the museum of strains and DNA of the smallpox virus told Izvestia. State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology “Vector” Sergei Shchelkunov.

Old new enemy

Photo: RIA Novosti/Grigory Sysoev

A lifesaver: Russia is creating its own vaccine against meningitis

The drug should be cheaper and more effective than Western analogues

“Then, when technology moved forward, we were able to cultivate the virus in cell culture, which allows us to obtain it in a more purified form and have technologically better control over the process. These are already second-generation drugs,” the specialist explained. “Then they began to produce weakened vaccines using chicken embryos, and this is the third generation of vaccines. However, the set of mutations in these strains is generated randomly by copying the virus multiple times in laboratory systems.