Pertussis, or whooping cough, is a highly contagious respiratory illness caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis. It has reemerged as a public health concern as pertussis rates in the US have increased and reached a 50-year high of 42,000 cases in 2012. This resurgence is not completely understood but is believed to be related to the replacement of whole-cell vaccines with acellular vaccines in the 1990s.
Tod Merkel (US Food and Drug Administration, Bethesda, MD) and colleagues recently compared the efficacy of whole-cell and acellular pertussis vaccines in baboons (Papio anubis). They found that although both vaccines protected baboons from developing severe pertussis symptoms, the acellular vaccine did not prevent colonization by or transmission of the bacteria (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA published online 25 November 2013; doi:10.1073/pnas.1314688110). They also noted that the acellular vaccine induced an immune response that was different from that induced by the whole-cell vaccine or by previous infection with B. pertussis.
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