David J. Witt, MD, of the department of infectious diseases, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, and colleagues published data on 904 patients with pertussis who were identified from a Kaiser Permanente database of more than 263,000 members aged 8 to 20 years.
“In patients with a full history of vaccinations, those with five total doses of only [acellular pertussis vaccine (aP)] had an 8.57 RR of pertussis (P<.0001) contrasted to those with one or more [whole-cell pertussis vaccine] dose,” Witt and colleagues wrote. “With six doses of aP, the RR of disease was 3.55 (P<.0001).”
The researchers noted some study limitations; specifically that the study was retrospective, and that pertussis testing was at the individual clinician’s discretion, which may have biased results.
Regardless of the study limitations, the researchers said: “Finding of waning immunity associated with ongoing outbreaks of pertussis argues for earlier booster doses of aP vaccine, on a routine basis and particularly in an outbreak setting, and clearly is a call for development of more effective and durable pertussis vaccines.”
Source: Healio
