Whooping Cough

this is your warning, prepare yourself, its sad 😦

There’s nothing more heartbreaking than diseases common to infants. Once a baby’s born they should be swaddled with love and snuggled. They’re so tiny and defenseless, totally reliant upon someone else, completely innocent. A parent wants nothing more for them to be perfect and healthy. These perfect moments can be robbed from families by disease.

Whooping cough is a disease caused by Bordetella pertussis bacteria and is common to infants. The infection starts like a normal cold (a stage called catarrhal) but it quickly sets that assumption straight with the next stage of the infection. The second stage (paroxysmal) is characterized by uncontrollable fits of coughing so severe that many infants break their own ribs. Those infected with pertussis struggle to breathe for six weeks and have to be hospitalized. Babies are tied to cords that will oxygenate their blood for them because they can’t breathe well enough on their own. The disease’s impacts don’t just stop once they reach the convalescent stage of recovery either. Long term brain damage can impact the child’s life due to the lack of oxygen reaching the brain.

But the good news is that this horrible disease is preventable with the TDaP vaccine in combination with tetanus and diphtheria. According to The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the vaccine is made by taking toxins produced by Bordetella pertussis an inactivating them. These toxoids then elicit an immune response that prepares the body from future attacks. With this vaccine we have saved sooo many sweet and squishy babies from ever having whooping cough. LOVE THAT.

Alright, now we’re back to bad news. It has recently come to light that there is evidence that certain B. pertussis strains are adapting to the current vaccine, as researchers in Australia have discovered and reported in the journal Vaccine.The bacteria have slowly been morphing into a superbug over the years. They are also getting better at hiding, as many of the evolved forms may only colonize and appear as carrier infections without symptoms. This is good for the bacteria and very bad for us because we may be shedding disease without even knowing we had it. Scientists will need to make changes to the current vaccine to better combat the evolving bug before it changes completely and is able to run rampant.