The United States began including a chicken pox vaccine as part of its standard panel of childhood vaccines in 1995, and shortly after introduced a shingles vaccine for those over the age of 60. In countries that did not vaccinate against chicken pox (today, relatively few), the shingles vaccine was not necessary. Explain why this is the case.
The chicken pox and shingles are caused by virus belonging to the same family. Both the viruses are almost similar in their structure. The chicken pox vaccine is made up of live attenuated chicken pox virus and shingles vaccine is made up of a protein molecule expressed by the shingles virus. The immune system, when affected by the chicken pox virus develops a memory response and this memory response is also useful against shingles virus. In countries that did not vaccinate against chicken pox, relatively few people get affected by the virus and those few develop immunity against the virus and hence the same viral response is enough to treat when infected by the shingles virus and hence there was no need of shingles vaccine to be given in them.
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