Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Why whooping cough is making a comeback

After a week with a dry cough, 16-year-old Ian McCracken started experiencing middle-of-the-night coughing fits so severe, he couldn't talk. He returned home from his first trip to the urgent care clinic in mid-July with ...

Health

US recommends routine HPV vaccination for boys

US health authorities on Friday urged all boys age 11-12 to get a routine vaccination against the most common sexually transmitted disease, human papillomavirus, or HPV.

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Whooping cough on the rise again

(Medical Xpress)—Whooping cough (Pertussis) is a highly contagious disease caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis and characterized by attacks of severe coughing, often (but not always) with a characteristic high-pitched ...

Pediatrics

Why is whooping cough on the rise?

Watching an infant suffer through a bout of whooping cough is agonizing. Blue face scrunched with effort, the baby strains to take a breath through a narrowed windpipe. She struggles, choking, for what seems like eons. Finally, ...

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Whooping cough returns as vaccine modified to reduce side-effects

Hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. - mostly babies and toddlers - were coming down with whooping cough each year when vaccines against "this menace," as one newspaper called it, were introduced in the 1930s and 1940s.

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Pertussis

Pertussis, also known as the whooping cough, is a highly contagious disease caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis. It derived its name from the "whoop" sound made from the inspiration of air after a cough. A similar, milder disease is caused by B. parapertussis. Although many medical sources describe the whoop as "high-pitched", this is generally the case with infected babies and children only, not adults.

Despite generally high coverage with the DTP and DTaP vaccines, pertussis is one of the leading causes of vaccine-preventable deaths world-wide. Ninety percent of all cases occur in the Third World. Canada is the only rich, industrial nation in which pertussis is still commonplace, though Australia saw a large increase in cases during a 2008/09 outbreak.

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