During a routine check-up of the efficiency of Tdap, a vaccine devised to prevent another whooping cough outbreak, a group of researchers working for the Kaiser Vaccine Study Center discovered that the vaccine provides partial protection against the disease. It prevented whooping cough 69 percent of the time during the first year, decreasing to 57 percent of the time during the second year and 25 percent during the third year.
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The Tdap booster protects against not only whooping cough – or pertussis – but also tetanus and diphtheria.
USA health officials became increasingly considered when a record uptick has noticed in whooping cough cases in 2012 where more than 48,000 children have been diagnosed with the infection, which is the highest since 1955.
The booster vaccination, known as Tdap, is given for the protection against whooping cough or pertussis, diphtheria and tetanus.
Further, children not recently vaccinated with Tdap were significantly more likely to test positive for pertussis, when compared with those recently vaccinated (HR per year = 1.35; 95% CI, 1.22-1.5). Whooping cough infections fell from a high of more than 227,000 in 1938, before the vaccine was introduced, to a little more than 1,000 cases in 1976, according to the CDC.
Note this study adds to mounting evidence that the acellular pertussis vaccines, which are included in Tdap products, may be less effective than earlier whole-cell vaccines.
According to a new study, the effectiveness of vaccination given for whopping cough starts to diminish with every passing year. Kids receive the first dose of whooping cough vaccine when they begin their kindergarten and get another shot at age 11 or 12.
For the study, researchers looked at the data of teens who received DTaP vaccination.
Dr. Klien said that the vaccine was quite effective in preventing whooping cough, but was linked with very high fevers.
Researchers examined Tdap vaccine effectiveness among adolescents previously vaccinated with only DTaP vaccines within Kaiser Permanente Northern California following both the 2010 and 2014 whooping-cough outbreaks.
That suggests policymakers should consider alternative vaccination strategies, Klein said. These numbers translate to a 35 percent decline in protection against the disease per year, the researchers said. But, according to CNN, the vaccine for whooping cough is not that efficient. “Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater”. The reason behind rise in the number of cases could be the effectiveness of vaccine fading over time. There’s a lot that scientists don’t understand about whooping cough, including such basic facts as why the bacteria produce the characteristic hacking cough followed by a high-pitched intake of breath, he said.
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“The issue is, the old vaccine against whooping cough had a hard safety profile”, explained Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and a professor of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. That’s because their tiny airways can easily swell shut.
