Thursday 1 November 2012

Meet the Pocker.

My poor babies have all had the chicken pox. Horrible illness! We don't want to do that again, that's for sure.
There is a really interesting aspect to Olive having the chicken pox. The other two kids had spots mainly on their torso's, as Google tells me is the most common area for chicken pox distribution. However, Olive had hers mainly on her face. Her face was COVERED in them. Absolutely covered. But her nevus, and not just her bathing trunk one but even the small ones, seemed to 'reject' the chicken pox. If any pox did happen to make their way onto a nevus, it was only on the edge where it met the normal skin.
It is as though, because the chicken pox couldn't develop on the nevus skin, they had to go somewhere, so to her face it was!
I don't know the reasoning behind this, (I was never good at human biology at school!) but on posting this very discussion point in a nevus support group, one person had a very logical answer.

According to the paper this member found on chicken pox and , it says that 'of all the cell types tested, only the melanocytes appeared not infectable by the virus, and CMN are chock full of nevomelanocytes in the dermis, which maybe confers the protective effect on those areas of skin'.

So it appears that the nevus has some really neat traits, and make up as well. Food for thought!

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