Short-time and low-dose intravenous acyclovir therapy in varicella zoster infections with malignant disease in children receiving combined chemotherapy.

The effects of low-dose and short-time acyclovir therapy in 14 children with malignant disease of ages 4-18 years who had developed varicella zoster virus infections while receiving aggressive chemo-/+radiotherapy are reported. Ten of them had chickenpox and 4 herpes zoster. Acyclovir 5 mg/kg was infused IV every 12 h in 9 patients and every 8 h in 5 patients for a median of 4 days' duration. We resumed the primary therapy when the patients' lesions had dried out and became crusted and new lesions had not reappeared. The period of initiation of the acyclovir therapy to the resumption of oncological treatment was 8.4 +/- 2.7 days for chickenpox and 12.0 +/- 3.4 days for herpes zoster patients. After restarting the oncological therapy, no adverse effects of acyclovir or complication of infection were observed. The efficiency of early, short-term, and relatively low dose acyclovir therapy is discussed and compared to the results in the relevant literature.