Whooping cough vaccine being developed for infants

IN Europe, whooping cough (pertussis) is on the increase, with more than 20,000 cases reported annually. Often infants fall victim to the disease, where it can be life-threatening. Possible complications include pneumonia, brain damage and collapsed lungs, leading to death in one in 200.

There is a vaccine on the market, but a newborn’s immune system is too immature to respond to it. Therefore scientists at the Institute Pasteur in Lille, France have developed a new vaccine that the babies' immune system can deal with: it is administered intranasally to reproduce the natural conditions of infection as closely as possible. The new substance is currently undergoing clinical trials and has passed the first phase of testing on human adults successfully.

The results were published in the 8 Jan 2014 of the peer-reviewed journal Plos One.

Related Video: New Vaccine to Protect Babies from Whooping Cough