Why whooping cough is back

The number of whooping cough cases in the U.S. this year is on track to be the highest in 50 years, although one researcher says the main reason behind the disease’s apparent resurgence is a heightened awareness of it. Besides improved reporting of cases of whooping cough (which is also called pertussis), factors in the disease’s resurgence include the fact that vaccines don’t completely protect against it, and that the current vaccine provides even less protection than previous ones did, according to Dr. James Cherry, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles. “It is time to recognize the successes of the past, and to implement new studies and direction for the control of pertussis in the future,” Cherry writes in an editorial published Thursday (Aug. 16) in the New England Journal of Medicine. The whooping cough vaccine reduced the rate of...