USA — There was a sustained decrease in whooping cough cases among young infants in the years after maternal Tdap vaccination was introduced in the United States, according to the results of a CDC study.
The JAMA Pediatrics published the findings of this ecologic study of 57,460 whooping cough cases on February 6, 2023, concluding there was a significant difference between Whooping cough incidence rate differences between the pre–maternal and post–maternal Tdap vaccination periods.
The researchers also reported that whooping cough cases reported among infants aged younger than 1 year between 2000 and 2019, of which 33.6% occurred in infants aged younger than 2 months.
Older infants (ages 6 months to under a year) had a relatively stable 19.7 whooping cough cases per 100,000 infants during the pre-maternal Tdap vaccination period.
Since then, these children have seen no significant changes in whooping cough incidence either.
These findings by researchers with the Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggest that maternal Tdap vaccination should be encouraged by healthcare providers.
Despite the apparent protection Tdap vaccination provides, maternal Tdap vaccination is in decline as only 55% of pregnant women were vaccinated in 2019.
The CDC initially recommended that pregnant women receive a pertussis-containing vaccine to protect both mothers and their infants in 2011 and has since been recommended for all women during every pregnancy from 27 to 36 weeks’ gestation.
After a woman receives Tdap, her body creates protective antibodies and passes them to her baby before birth, and it takes about two weeks before the vaccine effectiveness to peak.
Whooping cough is a highly contagious respiratory illness that often requires hospitalization.
The Tdap vaccine is not recommended for children before age 2 months, leaving newborns susceptible to disease during the early months of life unless they are protected through a maternal Tdap vaccine, such as the recently approved Boostrix manufactured by GSK.
According to the CDC, this leaves babies unprotected in the first months of life when they are at the highest risk of getting very sick if they get whooping cough.
The CDC said in the release that women should be vaccinated during the third trimester of each pregnancy “to boost their antibodies and pass those antibodies on to their infants,” and that all people who come in close contact with infants should also be up to date on their whooping cough vaccination.
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