Woman is killed by chickenpox aged 97

...despite the fact she’d had it nine decades earlier

A WOMAN aged 97 has died after becoming the oldest person to contract chickenpox – despite fighting off the disease nine decades ago, doctors say.

She first caught the highly contagious bug as a child but discovered she had the virus again when she developed a rash across her body.

The news is surprising because many people believe that those who have chickenpox as a child will never get it again as they become immune to the disease.

In fact the bug, known as the varicella zoster virus, lies dormant in the nerves, making it possible, although not common, to catch it again.

Despite responding well to medication, the woman died from complications 16 days after her diagnosis. Doctors at the Princess Royal University Hospital in South-East London said her case was extremely rare because most adults who catch the varicella zoster virus develop shingles.

The woman went to her local A&E department in Orpington when her four-day rash spread from her feet to her thighs, chest and abdomen. The former smoker also said she felt ill and had suffered bouts of fever and vomiting. Assuming that she was too old to get chickenpox, doctors initially diagnosed her with pemphigus, a rare skin disease that causes painful blisters to develop.

Despite prescribing her steroids, however, specialists continued to test her and discovered she had the varicella zoster virus,

Even though shingles has similar symptoms, a geriatrician and a dermatologist diagnosed the pensioner with chickenpox and prescribed her the correct medication. The woman started to improve after taking the course of medicine, but died from a heart attack two weeks after her diagnosis.

Chickenpox, which causes lesions and rashes across the body, affects around 65 per cent of children under the age of five and is largely thought of as a child’s disease. Some parents even organise ‘chickenpox parties’ in order to spread the disease at once.

Chickenpox is highly contagious and is spread by the patient’s coughs and sneezes, as well as fluid from the blisters.

The disease is usually mild in nature and clears up in a week or so, with treatment at home involving the use of paracetamol and moisturising creams to soothe the discomfort.

Occasionally the chickenpox virus can spread to the lungs and cause pneumonia. Patients can also develop complications if they catch another infection due to their lowered immune systems.

Shingles, which is more associated with adults, is believed to affect one in four people at some point in their lives.

An infection of a nerve and the surrounding skin, shingles causes a painful rash and, in some people, permanent nerve pain.

Writing in BMJ Case Reports, doctors at the South London hospital called chickenpox an ‘ageless disease’ and declared the patient to be the oldest person diagnosed with the condition.

They said: ‘To our knowledge, we present the oldest reported case of primary varicella zoster infection in an immuno-competent patient. Although there has been a previously reported case, it was not regarding a patient as old as ours.’