Unknown toxin may be cause of pertussis cough

Many things about pertussis remain unknown, including the exact cause of the tell-tale non-productive paroxsysmal cough unique to only this respiratory infection. James D. Cherry MD, MSc, from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, presented findings of a study here during the Pediatric Academic Societies Annual Meeting that indicates the cause of the pertussis-generated whooping cough is a protein yet to be identified. “There is an awful lot we don’t know about pertussis,” Cherry told Infectious Diseases in Children. “There are about 300 proteins that make up Bordetella pertussis that haven’t been identified, so my suggestion is that there is another cough toxin.” Cherry said that much of the molecular microbiology for B. pertussis has been done in animals, which as it turns out, most of which is irrelevant for humans. “What is particularly interesting is the tracheal cytotoxin, which supposedly destroys cilia. When we looked at that in infants who died,...