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Back to Chest Articles
Friday 14th October, 2005
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Whooping cough vaccine has proved more than 90 percent effective in
a national, large-scale clinical study.
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A vaccine to protect adults and adolescents against
illness due to Bordetella pertussis infection--or whooping
cough--has proved more than 90 percent effective in a
national, large-scale clinical study, according to research
results published in this week's issue of The New England
Journal of Medicine.
The vaccine, researchers say, could be used to stem the increase
in pertussis cases among adults and adolescents in the United States
and thereby prevent the prolonged cough illness, which can result in
hospitalization, pneumonia and cracked ribs in those populations. An
important additional benefit of the vaccine may be to decrease
transmission of the B. pertussis bacterium to infants, who are
particularly vulnerable to severe illness, complications and death
resulting from whooping cough. The illness annually affects 50
million people worldwide.
"During the 1990s, the number of reported pertussis cases among
adolescents and adults more than doubled in the United States as the
protective effects of earlier childhood immunizations have waned,"
says Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of
Health, which funded the study. "This new study shows that an
effective adult acellular pertussis vaccine is feasible and if
routinely used could provide the U.S. population greater protection
against the disease."
Known as the Adult Pertussis Trial, the 2.5-year study involved
2,781 healthy individuals between 15 and 65 years of age. Volunteers
were randomly assigned to one of two similarly sized groups that
received either the acellular pertussis vaccine or the control
hepatitis A vaccine (Havrix). For purposes of the trial, pertussis
cases were defined as illnesses with a cough lasting at least five
days that occurred more than 28 days after vaccination and were
confirmed through blood and nasal mucus testing.
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Joel I. Ward, M.D., of the Center for Vaccine Research at the
University of California, Los Angeles, led the multicenter clinical
study. GlaxoSmithKline, based in Philadelphia, supplied both the
pertussis test vaccine and the hepatitis A vaccine.
Ten confirmed cases of pertussis occurred during the trial--nine
cases were among the individuals who received the hepatitis A
vaccine. The researchers concluded that a single dose of the test
vaccine was safe and 92 percent effective in protecting adolescents
and adults against pertussis.
Although infants are routinely inoculated against pertussis
through a series of three diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP)
vaccines given in the first year of life, immunity has been shown to
weaken after six to 10 years.
"The purpose of an adult pertussis vaccine is to prevent the
disease in adults with the added benefit that it may help to put up
a roadblock in the transmission of the disease, so that parents,
grandparents and other adults are not unknowingly passing the
disease along," says David Klein, Ph.D., of NIAID's Respiratory
Diseases Branch.
In 2004, the highest number of U.S. pertussis cases was among
individuals 10 to 18 years of age with roughly 6,500 cases reported,
according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. Infants less than six months old experienced the second
highest number of pertussis cases last year, with an estimated 2,200
cases reported.
###
NIAID is a component of the National Institutes of Health, an
agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIAID
supports basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose and treat
infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted
infections, influenza, tuberculosis, malaria and illness from
potential agents of bioterrorism. NIAID also supports research on
transplantation and immune-related illnesses, including autoimmune
disorders, asthma and allergies.
Reference: JI Ward et al. Efficacy of an acellular pertussis
vaccine among adolescents and adults. The New England Journal of
Medicine 353(15):1555-1563 (2005).
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