Adults and teens need Pertussis (Whooping cough) booster shots

[Guest guest]

Is everyone covered for this upcoming winter season, with a flu shot

and pertussis booster (if they have not gotten one) ?

While pertussis

is a respiratory/ coughing illness, we all know that bad coughing can

cause vomitting. The band has slipped from bad coughing - this is

something I only became aware of maybe 6 months ago fronm another MX

doc.

see the below article.

Sandy r

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Whooping cough affects adults too

2008-10-17 12:00:50 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Amy Norton

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Whooping cough may be known as a

childhood disease, but adults should be aware that they can contract

the infection too, researchers say.

Whooping cough, known medically as pertussis, is a highly contagious

respiratory infection that causes uncontrollable attacks of coughing

and breathlessness. Before a vaccine became available, whooping cough

was a major, sometimes fatal childhood disease.

Outbreaks of whooping cough still occur but mainly among young

children who have not yet completed their vaccination course and

teenagers whose immunity has waned.

Adults, however, can also contract the infection. Based on the

medical literature, 0.5 percent of all adults contract whooping cough

each year, researchers report in the journal Deutsches Arzteblatt

International.

And while the disease is most dangerous in infants and young

children, one-quarter of adults who contract whooping cough have some

type of complication -- such as broken ribs or an abdominal hernia.

" If you look for adult pertussis, you find it in every country, " Dr.

Carl Heinz Wirsing von Konig, the senior author on the report, told

Reuters Health.

The problem is that the public and even most doctors -- apart from

pediatricians -- think of whooping cough as a childhood disease only,

said Wirsing von Konig, of the Helios Klinikum Krefeld in Germany.

Some clues that a cough might be pertussis include repeated coughing

bouts that go on for more than week and sometimes cause

breathlessness and choking. The classic sign of whooping cough is a

coughing attack that ends with a high-pitched inhale, or " whoop "

sound.

One challenge in diagnosing adult pertussis, Wirsing von Konig noted,

is that other bugs -- including viruses that cause cold and flu

symptoms -- can also produce a " pertussis-like " illness.

Adults with pertussis are typically treated with antibiotics, which

are ineffective against viruses.

To prevent whooping cough, infants and children receive five doses of

the DTaP vaccine, which also protects against diphtheria and tetanus.

But because pertussis immunity tends to wane by late childhood,

experts recommend that teenagers and adults get booster shots -- both

to protect themselves and to avoid passing the infection on to an

infant or young child.

SOURCE: Deutsches Arzteblatt International 2008.