As per pediatric oncologists at Brenner Children’s Hospital, part of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, children who have been administered with steroids and exposed to chicken pox are more likely to experience a more severe virus case than others.

A new research published in the October issue of Pediatrics has revealed that children undergoing steroid treatments for ailments such as leukemia run a higher risk of contracting a severe form of chicken pox, which may cause death.

From News-Medical.Net:

McLean and his colleagues studied 697 patients with acute leukemia over a nine-year period. About 16 percent or 110 patients contracted chicken pox. Of those 110 patients, 54 had severe disease, including two deaths. Of the patients whose chicken pox was diagnosed within three weeks of taking steroids, 70 percent had severe infection whereas only 44 percent of those who had not received steroid therapy within three weeks had severe infection. Although the study was limited to patients with leukemia, the findings may apply to other conditions for which steroids are used, McLean said.

“One of the things we need to remember to ask before we prescribe steroid treatment is whether the child has had a recent exposure to chicken pox,” McLean said. “If so, we recommend waiting until the incubation period has passed before beginning steroid therapy.”

Steroids are a common and highly successful treatment for many childhood cancers, McLean said.

“We just need to make sure we don’t mix the two,” he added. “Steroids and the chicken pox virus don’t go together. They are a bad combination.”

Thomas McLean, a pediatric oncologist at Brenner Children’s Hospital, said that steroids used for treating leukemia suppress the immune system and when the same child is exposed to the chicken pox virus (varicella virus) at the same time, this may result in contracting a more severe case of chicken pox.