The Return of Whooping Cough: What Your Family Needs to Know

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Whooping cough (aka pertussis) is on the rise, and has even been declared an epidemic in California. Learn the signs and symptoms.

We'd been coughing for weeks, but like most busy moms, I'd ignored my own symptoms because I assumed I'd take a turn for the better any day. I even wrote off my 2-year-old's coughing and vomiting spells as a virus because she's the one in our family who catches everything and stays sick the longest.

It wasn't until my 4-year-old caught the cough and woke up with broken blood vessels dotting her cheeks that I finally dragged us all to the pediatrician. You could have knocked me over with a feather when he announced, "You're all suffering from pertussis, more commonly known as whooping cough." What? Didn't pertussis disappear with polio and smallpox? Haven't we all been vaccinated for that? How on earth did this happen?

Common and Contagious

Whooping cough is apparently happening to a lot of people. Nearly 600,000 American adults contract pertussis each year. It's so contagious and so prevalent that pediatrician and father Dr. Chris Patton of Nashville's Old Harding Pediatric Associates says that, according to a study done at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, "One in three adults who came to the Emergency Room with a chief complaint of cough for more than 10 days tested positive for pertussis."

Although most kids receive pertussis protection with their DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis) vaccinations as babies, the immunity against the disease wears off five to 10 years after the last shot. That means that the majority of the population is at risk. Add in that a non-immune person living in the same household as someone with whooping cough has a 90 percent chance of becoming infected and you've got a recipe for disaster.

The good news is that scientists recently developed a booster vaccine for anyone over age 11 who hasn't received a tetanus and diphtheria booster dose in the last 10 or more years. Even better news: the shot is available at local doctor's offices right now. But Dr. Patton advises, "The initial production of the vaccine is behind the demand. We have it currently available, but it's a month-to-month availability at this point."