We all associate chickenpox with kids, but it can happen to adults too, as Julianna Margulies unfortunately discovered. The Good Wife star, 49, was forced to cancel a scheduled appearance Thursday night after coming down with the disease.
Chickenpox used to be very common in the U.S. (an average of 4 million people got it each year in the early 90s), but a vaccine was introduced in 1995 that has caused rates to plummet. However, adults who never had the chickenpox as a kid or who haven’t been vaccinated are still at risk.
“Now, the cases we do see are in the adolescent and adult population,” Donald Allegra, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at New Jersey’s Newton Medical Center, tells SELF.
Unfortunately, chickenpox is usually worse the older you are. “Generally, adults get sicker from the chickenpox,” Ruth Sorotzkin, M.D., an internist at California’s Providence Saint John’s Health Center, tells SELF. “They get higher fevers, tend to scar more, and just feel more ill.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), chickenpox is a highly contagious disease that causes a blister-like rash, itching, tiredness, and fever. It can cause between 250 and 500 blisters all over a person’s body and can be serious, especially in babies and adults. Allegra says adults still have the classic chickenpox symptoms—they feel run down for a few days, develop a fever, and then have itchy, fluid-filled blisters appear on their face or trunk that spreads to the rest of their body—but it can turn into something more dangerous. “A small percentage of people can develop pneumonia or get bacterial infections when they scratch the blisters,” he says. Fortunately, for most, things clear up within five to seven days.
While kids tend to have milder cases and are usually told to wait out the symptoms, adults are typically given anti-viral medication to help the disease run its course faster, Sorotzkin says. They’re also encouraged to lay low, since the disease is highly contagious.
Once a person has had chickenpox, the odds of getting it again are low, but he or she can develop shingles at a later time. “Everyone who has had chickenpox is at risk for getting shingles, which is a recurrence of the virus in the nerves,” says Sorotzkin. Shingles often shows up as a painful patch of blisters in a limited area of the body and nearly one in three Americans will get it in their lifetime, the CDC reports.
If you do develop chickenpox, experts say it’s important to see your doctor ASAP since the anti-viral medication is only effective for a small window of time. Otherwise, you can relieve the itchiness with oatmeal baths, calamine lotion, and Benadryl.
Not sure if you had chickenpox as a kid? Sorotzkin says your doctor can give you a simple blood test to find out. “A lot of times, people think they haven’t had chickenpox in the past and we find out they actually had a mild case,” she says. If you really have been chickenpox-free, your doctor will typically recommend you get vaccinated against it to prevent a Margulies-like situation from happening to you.
