Since the United States started the routine of vaccinating citizens against chicken pox in 1995, the number of Americans hospitalized each year because of the infection has decreased by more than two-thirds according to a government researchers report on Monday.

Studies revealed that after giving vaccinations to produce immunity against the Varicella virus that causes the illness, the annual rates of chickenpox infections in the country dropped by 80 percent to 90 percent by the succeeding decade.

A new study done by the researchers of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tried to look at how the rates of chickenpox-related hospitalizations have been modified.

Most chickenpox cases may pose mild symptoms such as itchy blisters and fever. However, there are some people that develop potentially life-threatening complications such as dehydration, pneumonia and inflammation of the brain, which is also known as encephalitis.

The researchers found out that there were one in 100,000 Americans that had chickenpox complications during the year 2000 and 2006 in comparison to the yearly rate of 4 out of 100,000 people between 1988 and 1995, the period before chickenpox vaccinations were introduced.

As a whole, chickenpox hospitalizations fell by 71 percent during the study period. The CDC researchers suppose that vaccinations against chickenpox prevented an estimated number of 50,000 hospitalizations in the year 2000 until 2006.

These results further support the great decline in severe cases of chickenpox disease, the lead researcher Adriana S. Lopez explained. She also reminded the parents that it is still important to have their children vaccinated against the disease.