Barbara Walters’ co-hosts on The View informed viewers that Walters has been hospitalized with the chicken pox. She’s 83, and the infection, which is more common among young children, is rare among older adults. According to her co-host Whoopi Goldberg, Walters has never had chicken pox before. The news raised questions about how likely adults are to get chicken pox and how chicken pox is related to a condition that’s more common among adults, shingles. So here are some quick facts about the infections. (MORE: Study: Kids’ Chicken-Pox Vaccine Helps Protect Babies Too) If you never had chicken pox as a child, can you still get the infection as an adult? Yes. Although most cases of chicken pox occur before age 10, adults who have never contracted the infection are still at risk. Can chicken pox be more severe in adults? Most people get chicken pox when they are young, but the symptoms can be more severe among people who catch the infection in an older age. They include loss of appetite, fever, headache, tiredness and rashes, all of which can be more taxing on the health of elderly adults. What is shingles, and how is it different from chicken pox? Shingles, also known as zoster or herpes zoster, is a painful skin rash caused by the same virus responsible for chicken pox: the varicella zoster virus. Even if you had chicken pox in the past, you can still contract shingles. That’s because the chicken-pox virus remains in the body, lying dormant in the roots of nerves, and can reactivate many years later. It’s not clear why the virus reawakens — in some people it never does — but researchers believe that the virus is triggered as the immune system weakens with age or in conditions of stress. About 1 out of 3 people in the U.S. is affected by shingles at some point in their lives, with the majority of cases occurring in men and women ages 60 and older. Shingles is less contagious than chicken pox and cannot be passed from … Continue reading 5 Things You Should Know About Chicken Pox and Shingles