| Case Report: Occupationally Related Recurrent Varicella (Chickenpox) in a Hospital Nurse Chih-Hung Ku,1,2 Yu-Tien Liu,3 David C. Christiani2,4
1School of Public Health, National Defense
Medical Center, National Defense University, Taipei, Taiwan; 2Department
of Environmental Health and Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public
Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; 3Department of
Microbiology and Immunology, National Defense Medical Center,
National Defense University, Taipei, Taiwan; 4Department
of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital,
Boston, Massachusetts, USA Abstract
Commonly accepted outcomes of varicella-zoster virus (VZV) infections include chickenpox (primary) and shingles (recurrence or latency) , as well lifetime immunity against chickenpox. We report the case of a registered nurse who worked in a neurologic surgery ward in a general hospital in Taipei, Taiwan. While working there for approximately 1 year, she developed recurrent chickenpox after caring for a paraparesis patient, who had herpes zoster during hospitalization in August 2002. The varicella incubation period was 10 days, which matched the range (10-21 days) . Recently negative specific serum IgM and positive specific serum IgG indicated a past VZV infection. The nurse did not get herpes zoster from the second episode of varicella on 9 August 2002 to 4 April 2005 and is now convalescing. We conclude that occupational VZV hazards exist in the health care environment and suggest testing for VZV antibody and a VZV vaccination program for susceptible health care workers. Key words: chickenpox, indirect fluroscent antibody, occupational exposure, polymerase chain reaction, shingles, Taiwan, varicella-zoster virus. Environ Health Perspect 113:1373-1375 (2005) . doi:10.1289/ehp.7766 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 15 June 2005]
Address correspondence to C-H. Ku, School of Public Health, National Defense Medical Center, National Defense University, Room 4328, No. 161, Section 6, Min-Chuan East Rd., Taipei City, Taiwan 114, Taiwan. Telephone/fax: 886-2-8792-9059. E-mail: cku@mail.ndmctsgh.edu.tw The authors declare they have no competing financial interests. Received 17 November 2004 ; accepted 14 June 2005. M.R. reported competing financial interests: He has provided expert testimony for law firms representing companies and workers ; he performs clinical evaluation of patients with chronic beryllium disease ; and he is the director of the beryllium lymphocyte proliferation testing laboratory. The other authors declare they have no competing financial interests. Received 13 December 2004 ; accepted 26 May 2005. The full version of this article is available for free in HTML or PDF formats. |
