Whooping cough outbreaks traced to change in vaccine
The recent outbreaks of whooping cough in the United States may be due, in part, to a change made two decades ago to vaccine ingredients, a new study finds.
Normally, in a pertussis outbreak, a first wave of cases in infants is followed by a second "bump" of cases in adolescents. (It is thought that immunity to pertussis wanes in the teen years, so doctors recommend getting a booster shot.) But in a 2010 outbreak, researchers noticed that children ages 7 to 10 were getting whooping cough. In 2012, an outbreak that centered in Washington affected mainly 7- to 13-year-olds.
"The lower level of protection of this group of kids is well explained by the fact that they were among the first group to be entirely vaccinated by the acellular vaccine," Gambhir said.
The new study supports the idea that researchers need to develop a pertussis vaccine that is both safe and effective, said Dr. Pritish Tosh, an infectious-diseases physician at the Mayo Clinic and a member of the Mayo Vaccine Research Group, who was not involved with the study.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/04/24/whooping-cough-outbreaks-traced-to-change-in-vaccine/?intcmp=ob_homepage_health&intcmp=obnetwork
The recent outbreaks of whooping cough in the United States may be due, in part, to a change made two decades ago to vaccine ingredients, a new study finds.
Normally, in a pertussis outbreak, a first wave of cases in infants is followed by a second "bump" of cases in adolescents. (It is thought that immunity to pertussis wanes in the teen years, so doctors recommend getting a booster shot.) But in a 2010 outbreak, researchers noticed that children ages 7 to 10 were getting whooping cough. In 2012, an outbreak that centered in Washington affected mainly 7- to 13-year-olds.
"The lower level of protection of this group of kids is well explained by the fact that they were among the first group to be entirely vaccinated by the acellular vaccine," Gambhir said.
The new study supports the idea that researchers need to develop a pertussis vaccine that is both safe and effective, said Dr. Pritish Tosh, an infectious-diseases physician at the Mayo Clinic and a member of the Mayo Vaccine Research Group, who was not involved with the study.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/04/24/whooping-cough-outbreaks-traced-to-change-in-vaccine/?intcmp=ob_homepage_health&intcmp=obnetwork
