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Whooping Cough Not a Disease of the Past; It's Here and Deadly
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Health officials say adults who have regular contact with children should get booster shots. Credit: Thomas Lohnes, AFP / Getty Images
It's the kind of ailment patent medicine salesmen sold Dr. Feelgood's Miracle Elixir to treat. Children just don't die from whooping cough in the 21st century.
The Los Angeles Times reports that just goes to show how far medical science has progressed and, in some tragic cases, how complacent we have become.
Mariah Bianchi thought she might have whooping cough shortly after her son, Dylan, was born in 2005, according to the Times. A pediatrician who checked the baby urged her to see her own doctor.
Her doctor reportedly dismissed her deep-chested cough that was followed by a whooping sound as she gasped for air. Couldn't be whooping cough, he reportedly said. That's a disease of the past.
Bianchi tells the Times the doctor told her to keep breast-feeding Dylan and wash her hands. It was probably just a cold.
Dylan died two weeks later. The Times reports an autopsy revealed he died from a massive infection of the bacterium Bordetella pertussis. In other words, whooping cough.
Bianchi, a critical care nurse, also infected her 3-year-old son Cole. He became seriously ill but survived. She doesn't know where she got the disease. She tells the Times, however, she was vaccinated against it as a child.
"It happened so fast," she says.
The disease spread terror in early generations because of how easily and frequently it killed infants. Four newborns, all less than 3 months old, have died in California this year from whooping cough, according to the Times.
That alarms health officials, who point out there were only three whooping coughing deaths in the state for the whole of last year.
They warn parents whooping cough is not a thing of the past. It is here, deadly and frequently misdiagnosed -- especially in its early stages.
Bianchi was already coughing and whooping in the late stages of her pregnancy. Even though she encountered a battery of doctors and medical professionals, the Times reports, only one of them suspected whooping cough.
Dr. James D. Cherry, a UCLA pediatrics professor and pertussis expert, tells the Times whooping cough is cagey. Symptoms in infants are usually mild.
They may have a runny nose or an undetectable or mild cough, but they generally don't run a fever, he tells the newspaper.
When they do start coughing as the disease progresses, he adds, they cough so much they fail to get enough oxygen. Pneumonia can develop. The bacterium releases a toxin that can raise white blood cell levels so high that they begin to clog blood vessels, hampering the body's ability to bring oxygen into the blood.
Cherry tells the Times most infants get the disease from family members, but the disease is frequently missed in adults. Many doctors just don't believe adults get whooping cough.
"I'll give a talk somewhere and people will say, 'Oh, adults don't get pertussis,' " Cherry tells the newspaper.
And many adults believe they're immune, having been vaccinated against the disease as children. However, Cherry tells the Times, immunity to whooping cough can begin fading five years after an inoculation, and people need to get booster shots.
According to the Times, public health officials want everyone with regular contact with a baby to get boosters as part of a strategy called "cocooning." Although this strategy was made possible with the approval in 2005 of a whooping cough booster vaccine for adults and adolescents, it was not widespread when Bianchi was pregnant.
"I wish a million times we could do things differently," she tells the Times. "But there's nothing I can do except tell my story. This is a serious disease. This is not just a regular cough that you get with a cold. This is really dangerous for babies. Let's protect our babies. Let's vaccinate ourselves."
Related: Researchers Blast Another Link Between Autism and Vaccines
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 4)
6-02-2010 @ 1:53PM
liz said...I had it as a child, and yes, I had been vaccinated. I missed several months of school. It was awful. AWFUL.
Reply
6-02-2010 @ 8:49PM
jonie said...all the old time diseases are coming back because of the illegals
crossing the borders by the thousands a day from third world countries.
6-02-2010 @ 8:48PM
Mellonie said...My son who is 10 just had whooping cough in October. They pushed it under the rug as much as the they could because of the swine flu. They didn't want the parents to "freak out" over the whooping cough..........IT IS OUT THERE PEOPLE.....TAKE IT SERIOUS. It was so awful to see my son laid up in the hospital for weeks and being isolated like a disease when he was back in school. They stuck in him a room and wasnt allowed to leave!!!!! He was in 3 different hospitals and finally taken to Rileys Hospital and they still would not come out and say it was whooping cough..Just possible case. But they sure did give my other two smaller kids an antibodic JUST in case it was the whopping cough to protect them from it and they never got it.
6-02-2010 @ 9:22PM
denise said...This disease is awful! but im glad vaccinations are available for kids..
Http://www.childrenhealthsecrets.com
6-02-2010 @ 9:13PM
Shirley said...OF COURSE THIS IS BECAUSE OF ILLIGALS. THESE PEOPLE COME FROM DISGUSTING COUNTRIES THAT DON'T VACINATE THEIR CITIZEN'S. STOP ILLIGAL IMMIGRATION FOR GOD'S SAKE. AND PROTECT OUR OWN CITIZEN'S FIRST!!
6-03-2010 @ 4:21PM
MARIAH said...JONIE...
YOU ARE SOOOO RIGHT.
All these yesteryear ailments are back because of the illegals, .
and nothing is done about it. Just keep letting them in.
6-03-2010 @ 12:00AM
WilaThor said...I had it at age six and I was deathly ill. Was her MD Dr Antons? He is mine and his advice to me has been so lame and so off the mark that I'm surprised I'm alive after suffering a terrible illness that he just poo poo'd. I have to change once I get well. Don't ever take a pat on the hand from your dr if you feel in your gut something is wrong. Call your health insurance and complain. My dr does not like to refer people out. I guess he has a God complex. But he is not able to diagnose things that are not in his area of expertise and he is a dangerous dr because of his arrogance and his refusal to refer to a specialist. He has to live with his mistakes, too bad his patients don't always get to.
6-03-2010 @ 12:27AM
undrgrndgirl said...@jonie - "old time" diseases (which really is a stupid statement, my friend's kid had whooping cough in the 80s) are NOT coming back because of immigration (illegal or otherwise) they are coming back because of the OVERUSE of antibiotics right here at "home"...
6-02-2010 @ 2:00PM
myraJ said...I too developed what my doctor thought to be a case of pneumonia or a bad cold. The coughing persisted long past the normal expectancy for a cold or flu and even pneumonia so he started testing me for Valley Fever, TB among other different upper respiratory illnesses but not pertussis because its a 'kids' disease. The cough continued to worsen and drag on, worse at night but unrelenting once it started. this went on for 6 weeks. I happened to have Discovery Health on TV one afternoon and the topic was the resurgence of childhood illness in college students. As my daughter was going to be a freshman and living in the dorm that fall, I started to pay closer attention. They mentioned that one of the most miss diagnosed illnesses being found on the college campusses was pertussis and then listed the symptoms. I had every single one of them. I called my doctor and told him what I had just heard and asked him to look into it for me. He called me back a few hours later, had me go to a lab and get tested. I came back positive with pertussis bacteria. Even though I had been vaccinated as a child for pertussis, I still got the disease. And all that time... 8 weeks, we just thought it was a cold with a bad cough.
Reply
6-02-2010 @ 8:15PM
ray said...another gift from our friends south of the border?
Reply
6-02-2010 @ 11:28PM
ashleigh said...Yes, ray, and also because so many people have been lied to about vaccines. People try to scare others against using any kind of vaccines, so they don't get their children vaccinated, and then the children get sick and get other children and adults sick, and the adults that get sick give pass it on to their children, and so it goes... So between no vaccinations and zillions of illegals, the old days are here again...
6-02-2010 @ 8:21PM
Gadfly said...We used to be rid of tuberculosis too until the Haitian invasion. We seem to at ground zero as a third world. Only a few million (we are now at 3,100,000,000 going for four million) until we may as well hang it up to over population and dying of disease as the North American Indians did when we and the Spainards invaded bringing in the death diseases that, for the most part, killed them off. The late-great-United States is merely a state in the global nation and doomed as was Rome.
Reply
6-02-2010 @ 8:34PM
Belle said...A lot of diseases are coming back because people are refusing vaccination for their children due to the fear of autism. Heres the thing though, it is our job to vaccinate our healthy child for everything because there are other children who CAN'T get vaccinated due to a weak immune system. If we the parents do our part then not only are we protecting our child from dangerous diseases that killed many children before vaccinations were introduce but we are protecting those who are unable to get the vaccination and can't afford to get a life threatening disease.
Reply
6-02-2010 @ 9:10PM
Shari said...OR PERHAPS IT IS ALL THE ILLEGAL ALIENS - NOT UNDOCUMENTED workers....
6-03-2010 @ 3:37PM
doubleangel935 said...well said!! my sister-in-law had faconi anemia when she was younger and she had a very very compromised system after she was finally released from the hospital.
6-03-2010 @ 4:21AM
Carol Stout said...This is one of the most sensible comments that I have read here today. I agree with Belle that it is our duty as parents to get our children vaccinated asap. All of my children received their vaccinations when they were babies and got booster shots at the proper times. There is always a chance that a vaccination or anything else may cause other problems but the problems that can be caused without the vaccinations are often even more severe if not deadly. I am 62 years old and had all my vaccinations as a child but from what I have been reading I am thinking that I should ask my doctor if I shouldn't have a booster shot. I am not around a lot of children but I am often around the elderly and/or disabled as I am a care giver. I also have a son who is disabled and lives in a group home so if I went to his home and I was even in the beginning stages of coming down with something I could possibly expose his roommates who are not as healthy as he is to something that could be harmful to them.
6-02-2010 @ 8:33PM
eeyorelrn said...You can thank the revolution over the past decade or two of parents not vaccinating their children for the resurgence of Whooping Cough, Measles, and Mumps... It is the very same thing that has happened with antibiotics... When people fail to use the treatments as prescribed (or in this case refuse to vaccinate) resistant and deadly strains begin to develop... That is why people who were previously vaccinated are developing severe cases of the diseases instead of mild cases or no cases.... All upheld and reproduce-able data in studies show that vaccinations are more helpful, and less harmful than eating a serving of certain fish than if you got them repeatedly year after year....
Reply
6-02-2010 @ 9:05PM
ndm said...You don't suppose this disease came across the boarder from the south do you! With people coming here to the United States crossing the boarder bring this with them! Nooooo I guess thats racial profiling!
Reply
6-02-2010 @ 11:05PM
Vera said...to ndm:
Boarder = someone who rents a room from another person
Border = a line dividing two countries and/or states
8-17-2010 @ 7:44PM
kipulani said...Aloha e,
Diseases happen and they cycle into our societies. Help build your immune systems and those of your families by cutting out the sugars and fast foods.
Keep your children home if they aren't feeling the slightest bit well. I see plenty of folks/children out and about with colds, runny noses, and coughs.
Children that have been vacinated are also getting ill. If "aliens (documented or undocumented) are bringing in the disease ~ why aren't we hearing about a pandemic?
Protect yourself and the community by staying home when you are not feeling well.