CDC: Whooping cough rising at alarming rate in US

MIKE STOBBE

AP Med­ical Writer

ATLANTA — The U.S. appears headed for its worst year for whoop­ing cough in more than five decades, with the num­ber of cases ris­ing at an epi­demic rate that experts say may reflect a prob­lem with the effec­tive­ness of the vaccine.

Nearly 18,000 cases have been reported so far — more than twice the num­ber seen at this point last year, the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion said Thurs­day. At this pace, the num­ber for the entire year will be the high­est since 1959, when 40,000 ill­nesses were reported.

Nine chil­dren have died, and health offi­cials called on adults — espe­cially preg­nant women and those who spend time around chil­dren — to get a booster shot as soon as possible.

“My biggest con­cern is for the babies. They’re the ones who get hit the hard­est,” said Mary Selecky, chief of the health depart­ment in Wash­ing­ton, one of the states with the biggest out­breaks. Wash­ing­ton and Wis­con­sin have reported more than 3,000 cases each, and high num­bers have been seen in a num­ber of other states, includ­ing New York, Min­nesota, Kansas and Arizona.

Whoop­ing cough has gen­er­ally been increas­ing for years, but this year’s spike is star­tling. Health inves­ti­ga­tors are try­ing to fig­ure out what’s going on, and the­o­ries include bet­ter detec­tion and report­ing of cases, some sort of evo­lu­tion in the bac­te­ria that cause the ill­ness, or short­com­ings in the vaccine.

The vac­cine that had been given to young chil­dren for decades was replaced in the late 1990s fol­low­ing con­cerns about rashes, fevers and other side effects. While the new ver­sion is con­sid­ered safer, it is pos­si­ble it isn’t as effec­tive long term, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, who over­sees the CDC’s immu­niza­tion and res­pi­ra­tory dis­ease programs.

Some par­ents in Cal­i­for­nia and other states have rebelled against vac­ci­na­tions and got­ten their chil­dren exempted from rules that require them to get their shots to enroll in school. Wash­ing­ton state has one of the high­est exemp­tion rates in the nation. But the CDC said that does not appear to be a major fac­tor in the out­break, since most of the young­sters who got sick had been vaccinated.

Whoop­ing cough, or per­tus­sis, is a highly con­ta­gious dis­ease that can strike peo­ple of any age but is most dan­ger­ous to chil­dren. Its name comes from the sound chil­dren make as they gasp for breath.

It used to be a com­mon threat, with hun­dreds of thou­sands of cases annu­ally. Cases grad­u­ally dropped after a vac­cine was intro­duced in the 1940s, and the dis­ease came to be thought of as a relic of another age. For about 25 years, fewer than 5,000 cases were reported annu­ally in the U.S. The num­bers started to climb again in the 1990s.

In both 2004 and 2005, cases sur­passed 25,000. The num­bers dipped for a few years but jumped to more than 27,000 in 2010, the year Cal­i­for­nia saw an espe­cially bad epidemic.

Experts believe whoop­ing cough occurs in cycles and peaks every three to five years. But they have been star­tled to see peaks this high. Vac­ci­na­tions are sup­posed to tamp down the amount of infec­tion in the pop­u­la­tion and make the val­leys in the cycles longer, said Pej­man Rohani, a Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan researcher who is co-leader of a fed­er­ally funded study of whoop­ing cough trends.

The gov­ern­ment rec­om­mends that chil­dren get vac­ci­nated in five doses, with the first shot at age 2 months and the final one between 4 and 6 years. A booster shot is rec­om­mended around 11 or 12.

Vac­ci­na­tion rates for young chil­dren are good — about 84 per­cent of 3-year-olds have got­ten the rec­om­mended num­ber of shots. But fewer than 70 per­cent of ado­les­cents have got­ten all their shots. Most states require per­tus­sis vac­ci­na­tions for school attendance.

In a pos­si­ble indi­ca­tor of a prob­lem with the vac­cine, inves­ti­ga­tors in Wash­ing­ton state were alarmed to see high rates of whoop­ing cough in young­sters around 13 and 14.

Health author­i­ties are gird­ing for what may be a bad cou­ple of years.

“There is a lot of per­tus­sis out there, and there may be more com­ing to a place near you,” Schuchat said.

Posted by AP News on Jul 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.