The Vaccine for Whooping Cough Is Not That Efficient

(Mirror Daily, United States) – According to the latest studies, the vaccine for whooping cough is not that efficient. The Tdap vaccine was developed to protect children against pertussis, and it is mandatory for all children that attend middle school. But, according to CNN, the vaccine for whooping cough is not that efficient.

Tdap was developed to protect children against pertussis, or as it commonly called the whooping cough. Pertussis is an infection of the respiratory tract that leads to a deep cough followed by a sort of a pitch sound. It mostly affected children or adults with a slow immune system. The only fatalities that have been reported to be linked with the whooping cough were infants.

Pertussis is quite infections, but it only affects children that have not received the vaccine. It is important for pregnant women and women with infants or toddlers to steer clear of an infected person because the whooping cough is something that is better prevented than treated.

But it seems that the vaccine for whooping cough is not that efficient, according to a Californian study. 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.

And the effects wear off in just over a year in some, and four years in others.

In order to determine the level of effectiveness of the Tdap vaccine, the researchers monitored a total of 280,000 students that received the vaccine for whooping cough. Out of the total, 69 percent were protected in the first year after the vaccination took place, 57 percent after the second year, and then an astonishing 25 percent in the third year and only a handful of 9 percent were still protected against the disease after the fourth year.

All of the children that were analyzed during the study received their mandatory vaccination before the age of 11, or 12, exactly like the California law stipulates.

The fact that the vaccine for whooping cough is not that efficient was already known by health officials, that is why adolescents were forced to receive a booster for the Tdap vaccine. But it seems that the booster, too, provides minimum protection against the infection of the respiratory tract.

Although its efficiency is highly contested, public health authorities continue to administer the vaccine because it does help in preventing the transmission to infants.

Image source: www.flickr.com

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Melissa Gansler

Melissa calls herself Poet, essayist, and naturalist. Graduated from the University of Michigan, Melissa holds a degree in Literature. Besides English, she can also speak Chinese, German, French.