Whooping Cough Essay

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Whooping cough is a vaccine-preventable disease caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis and Bordetella parapertussis. Despite having an available vaccine, cases of whooping cough in the United States and around the world have steadily increased since the 1980s, especially among infant and adolescent age groups. In recent years, 2012 had the highest number of cases since 1955. The number of cases have since decreased however, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted a 15% increase in cases between 2013 and 2014 (“Pertussis Outbreak Trends”).
The genus Bordetella, named after Jules Bordet, includes nine different species of coccobacillus shaped bacteria. They are Gram-negative and every single species can infect humans, …show more content…

The primary risk factor is for someone being improperly vaccinated or unvaccinated; another risk factor is age. Whooping cough is common among adolescents because vaccine immunity has decreased, and it is common in infants under six months of age because they are not adequately protected by their vaccine schedules. Another risk factor for infants are adults and children who have never been vaccinated against whooping cough. Since mothers are a source of infection for infants, the CDC started recommending that mothers receive the vaccine after giving birth and before leaving the hospital (Spratling, …show more content…

Another reason is that children who received the DTaP vaccine have been shown to have lowered antibody levels versus the children who were vaccinated with DTwP. When the older population did get sick, the symptoms were milder than in those who were not vaccinated. Yet another reason is altered strains of B. pertussis. In a study completed by the Dutch, large samples were collected and analyzed. The older strains of the bacteria had the same gene makeup as the strains used in vaccines, but the strains that were collected between 1990 and 1996 did not (Wagner, et al.). In the Austrian study, samples were taken and genomes sequenced, from people aged one month to 47 years, in three different cities. In all, 77 samples were taken and typing was successful for 34 samples. Multiple locus variable number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA), a technique used for DNA sequencing, identified several different types of B. pertussis. The most prevalent type was Type 27 with a 67% frequency and the next common were Types 18, 36, 38, 63, 128, and 129. These appeared at a frequency between 3% and 12% (Wagner, et

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