Online-only: Study deems whooping cough vaccine safe for seniors
================================================================

* Natalie McGill

Seniors should have little to fear when getting a whooping cough vaccination that could not only save their lives but those of their grandchildren, according to a recent study.

The study, published in November in Clinical Infectious Diseases, showed no greater risk for side effects such as inflammation after injection for adults ages 65 and older who received booster shots to ward off pertussis — also known as whooping cough — compared to those who only received a vaccine for tetanus and diphtheria.

Pertussis is a contagious and potentially fatal bacterial infection common in infants and children that causes frequent coughing fits, according to the National Institutes of Health. The booster tetanus-diphtheria-acellular-pertussis, or Tdap, vaccine is recommended for adolescents and adults. But the senior population was not a part of the initial test group during Tdap clinical trials, said lead study author Hung Fu Tseng, PhD, MPH, a senior research scientist with the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research and Evaluation.

It is imperative for seniors to get vaccinated, as children are more susceptible to whooping cough and infants cannot start a series of diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, or Dtap, shots until they are 2 months old, Tseng said.

“That’s the major reason for the senior population to protect themselves and also protect the very young children in the family,” Tseng told The Nation’s Health.

For the study, conducted from 2006–2010, a test group of about 119,000 seniors ages 65 and older received the tetanus-diphtheria vaccine and the same number of people received the Tdap vaccine, Tseng said. Eight people who received the Tdap vaccine and four who received the tetanus-diphtheria vaccine had mild reactions at the injection site, the study said. The study concluded there is a slightly higher risk for reactions at the site of the injection one to six days after a Tdap shot, but results are still comparable to the effects of receiving a tetanus-diphtheria vaccine.

Seniors who are frequently around infants are encouraged to get a Tdap vaccine, according to 2010 recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Seniors are also encouraged to get a one-time dose of Tdap instead of a tetanus-diphtheria shot if they have never received a Tdap shot before, ACIP said.

There are peaks in in whooping cough outbreaks every three to five years throughout the United States, according to CDC. Outbreaks occurred in Colorado, Minnesota, Washington and Wisconsin in 2012. In Washington, for example, there were 4,548 cases of the whooping cough between April 2012 and November 2012 compared to 671 in that same time period in 2011. A large-scale outbreak of whooping cough occurred in 2010 in California, where there were 9,000 cases and 10 infant deaths, according to the California Department of Public Health.

For more information on the study, visit [http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/11/26/cid.cis871.full](http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/11/26/cid.cis871.full).

*   Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association