Corresponding authors: Ana Bento, anisabelbento@gmail.com; Pejman Rohani, Rohani@uga.edu
Despite high vaccine coverage, a recent national resurgence of pertussis (whooping cough) in England and Wales has researchers questioning the drivers behind the sudden surge of this highly contagious respiratory disease. Interestingly, researchers have noted a shift in the affected age-distribution of this disease. Historically, pertussis was considered primarily a childhood disease, but the recent rebound shows trends in increasing incidence in teens and adults. For this reason, it is necessary to re-evaluate control strategies by identifying potential sentinel age cohorts that may be driving transmission. To understand which age cohorts are most responsible for this shift in trends, CEID members Ana Bento, Pejman Rohani, and colleagues compiled and analyzed pertussis case reports in England and Wales from 1982 to 2012 to quantify the relative transmission contribution of different age cohorts. To do so, they used three separate statistical methods allowing them to describe the changes in age-specific incidence and contrast these recent changes with previous transmission dynamics during the 1980s. The results of their statistical analyses showed that prior to 2002 (before a pre-school booster was introduced and the whole cell vaccine was replaced by an acellular vaccine), children below the age of 10 were identified as a core group, meaning that incidence of the disease in these populations was predictive of incidence in other age groups. However, in the years following 2002, no core groups were identifiable. While it is challenging to isolate the drivers of disease emergence and re-emergence, as well as tracking these changes over time in populations, studies such as this are important because they assimilate and analyze long-term data that may play a vital role in predicting future outbreaks.
Bento, A. I., Riolo, M. A., Choi, Y. H., King, A. A., & Rohani, P. (2018). Core pertussis transmission groups in England and Wales: A tale of two eras. Vaccine, 36(9), 1160-1166. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2018.01.046