"There continue to be peaks in reported cases of whooping cough every few years."

 

Young babies needed to be vaccinated at a young age and should avoid people with bad colds and coughs, people who may have pertussis--whooping cough.

According to the CDC, “About half of babies who get whooping cough end up in the hospital, 1 out of 5 will get pneumonia (lung infection), and 1 out of 100 will die.”  

 

In 1900 Jules Bardot and Octave Gengou spotted the small ovoid bacterium that causes the illness in the sputum of a very sick 5-month old child.  Six years later they were able to grow the microbe on the special brew they created.   Called Bordetella pertussis, the microorganism was named for Jules Bordet, a prominent Belgian who won the 1919 Nobel Prize "For his discoveries relating to immunity."

 

When a person is infected and is treated early with antibiotics like azithromycin or septra, they usually get well.  If they are treated after they have been sick for a week, the medicine kills the bacteria and the person is no longer contagious, but they frequently continue to have a serious cough for additional 2 or more weeks. 

 

The bacteria that cause the disease produce a toxin, and the CDC states “Pertussis is primarily a toxin-mediated disease. The bacterial toxin attaches to the cilia of the respiratory epithelial cells and it paralyzes the cilia.  This causes inflammation of the respiratory tract and it interferes with the clearing of pulmonary secretions.”

 

·         The CDC recommends that babies and young children receive five shots of DTaP between the ages of 2 months and 6 years.  Older children and teens should get one shot of Tdap between the ages of 11 and 12 years.  (The triple injection contains vaccines for three diseases.  D --diphtheria, T--tetanus and the P—pertussis.)

 “The vaccine has been about 80 % effective in preventing serious disease and death from pertussis.  (Unfortunately) the vaccine protection only lasts for the 5-10 years after the last dose of the full vaccination course.”

Octave Gengou, the Belgian who with Bardot discovered the cause of pertussis, developed the first whooping cough vaccine in 1912.  In 1945, he became professor emeritus at the University of Brussels.

·         https://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/clinical/disease-specifics.html

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27256351/

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsbm.1962.0002

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octave_Gengou



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