Is this whooping cough vaccine doing more harm than good?

But sometimes they simply don’t do too much good, as vaccine for whooping cough not as effective as believed.

The Tdap booster is meant to protect against pertussis, or whooping cough, tetanus and diphtheria.

A vaccine, used for protecting teens from whooping cough, is not found as effective as it should be. Its effectiveness, however, wanes quickly providing little protection four years after vaccination.

In fact, vaccine effectiveness fell sharply from year 2 (56.9%, 95% CI 41.3%-68.4%) to year 3 following the Tdap booster (25.2%, 95% CI -4.2% to 46.4%).

Currently, kids first receive the vaccine at kindergarten, while at the age of 11 or 12 immunization is repeated once more.

United States health officials became increasingly considered when a record uptick has noticed in whooping cough cases in 2012 where more than 48,000 children have been diagnosed with the infection, which is the highest since 1955.

Researchers found that kids aged 10 to 16 had some of the highest rates of whooping cough during the outbreak, even though majority were vaccinated.

California has been facing with a whooping cough outbreak in the past six years; however, Dr. Klein’s findings might help fight the increase of the disease. Study authors noted that routine vaccination at ages 11-12 did not prevent the epidemic. Researchers from the Kaiser Study Center of Permanent Vaccine have discovered that Tdap, that protects children from diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, only protects approximately 69 percent out of the total adolescents that get the shot. She added that till the time a long-term solution is not found for this problem, alternative measures, other than the Tdap vaccine, must be mulled over.

“The results in this study raise serious questions regarding the benefits of routinely administering a single dose of Tdap to every adolescent at age 11 or 12”, lead study author Dr. Nicola Klein, co-director of Kaiser Permanente’s Vaccine Study Center, said in a statement.

The DTaP vaccine is given during childhood but regardless of high vaccination rates in the USA, cases of whooping cough remained high since DTaP replaced the DTwP vaccine, which was linked with very high fevers. Children older than about 11 in 2010 had probably received the whole cell vaccine as infants, and still retained some protection from it.

Klein said that it’s an especially important issue because the number of Californians who have only ever received the short-lived acellular vaccine is growing, creating conditions for bigger and bigger outbreaks. They say it might be time to think about changing the way the vaccine is administered. The U.S. and other countries have observed a rise in whooping cough cases after the switch to the new vaccine despite high levels of coverage.

In 1938, the US health agencies registered over 227,000 cases of infection with the whooping cough. “While awaiting development of new vaccines that will provide longer-lasting protection against pertussis, we should consider alternate Tdap immunization strategies for adolescents”.