CHICAGO – Vaccinating children against chickenpox saves the U.S. health care system nearly $100 million a year in reduced hospitalizations for severe cases of the disease, a study found.
Though most people who get the disease usually can be treated at home, chickenpox can be serious, and complications requiring hospitalization can include severe skin infections, encephalitis and pneumonia.
In 1993, two years before the government licensed the vaccine for routine use in early childhood, nearly 14,000 Americans were hospitalized for chickenpox complications at a cost of $161 million, compared with 3,729 hospitalizations and $66 million in related costs in 2001, the researchers estimated.
Routine vaccination has reduced cases in young children who get the shots and helped keep the disease from spreading to unvaccinated older children and adults, in whom the disease tends to be more severe.
The reduction in the disease “is excellent news for the vaccine program,” said lead researcher Dr. Matthew Davis, a University of Michigan pediatrician who said he has no ties to the vaccine makers. The study was funded by the university.
Dr. Ben Katz, an infectious disease specialist at Chicago’s Children’s Memorial Hospital, said the numbers are believable and were not unexpected.
“There’s less complications, less hospitalizations, and you’re saving money to boot. It’s all good news,” Katz said.
Davis and colleagues analyzed 1993-2001 data from a nationally representative annual compilation of patients discharged from hundreds of hospitals nationwide.
Before 1995, 41 percent of patients hospitalized for chickenpox were children from infancy through age 4, compared with 33 percent for people age 20 and older. That pattern reversed by 2001, when 28 percent of chickenpox-related hospitalizations were very young children and 46 percent were adults.
Despite indirect protection from vaccinating young children, adults and teens who have not yet had chickenpox should consider getting the shots themselves, Davis said.
The study appears in September’s Pediatrics, prepared for release today.
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