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Associated Press
Researchers have discovered the first U.S. cases of whooping cough caused by a germ that may be resistant to the vaccine.
Health officials are looking into whether cases like the dozen found in Philadelphia might be one reason the nation just had its worst year for whooping cough in six decades. The new bug was previously reported in Japan, France and Finland.
"It's quite intriguing. It's the first time we've seen this here," said Dr. Tom Clark of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The U.S. cases are detailed in a brief report from the CDC and other researchers in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.
Whooping cough is a highly contagious disease that can strike people of any age but is most dangerous to children. It was once common, but cases in the U.S. dropped after a vaccine was introduced in the 1940s.
An increase in illnesses in recent years has been partially blamed on a version of the vaccine used since the 1990s, which doesn't last as long. Last year, the CDC received reports of 41,880 cases, according to a preliminary count. That included 18 deaths.
The new study suggests that the new whooping cough strain may be why more people have been getting sick. Experts don't think it's more deadly, but the shots may not work as well against it.
In a small, soon-to-be published study, French researchers found the vaccine seemed to lower the risk of severe disease from the new strain in infants. But it didn't prevent illness completely, said Nicole Guiso of the Pasteur Institute, one of the researchers.
The new germ was first identified in France, where more extensive testing is routinely done for whooping cough. The strain now accounts for 14 percent of cases there, Guiso said.
In the United States, doctors usually rely on a rapid test to help make a diagnosis. The extra lab work isn't done often enough to give health officials a good idea how common the new type is here, experts said.
"We definitely need some more information about this before we can draw any conclusions," the CDC's Clark said.
The U.S. cases were found in the past two years in patients at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia. One of the study's researchers works for a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, which makes a version of the old whooping cough vaccine that is sold in other countries.
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We can all thank these goofball mothers who are opposed to vaccinating their kids on grounds based on pseudoscience for these outbreaks.
That's almost like blaming antibiotic resistant bacteria on people who have never taken antibiotics.
If it's a new strain than the vaccine doesn't work so it doesn't matter if I'm vaccinated. Therefore the outbreak has nothing to do with how many are vaccinated
It's also like blaming an outbreak of chickenpox on people who don't get their damn flu vaccines.
It's a new strain no one has been vaccinated against it since the vaccine available for whooping cough is for the older strain. It even says that the vaccine doesn't work for this new strain. Why blame those who haven't been vaccinated or even if you're up to date on vaccines the new strain isn't in the vaccines available now? It's the already vaccinated that cause the mutations not the unvaccinated. And even if you or your little ones are vaccinated against a disease and an unvaccinated person gets the disease you are already protected so you won't get the disease so no more worrying and blaming those who aren't. As far as your body goes you already had the disease and you can't get it again, unless it mutates, so stop blaming those who are unvaccinated.
Re:
No,it doesn't - read again:
In other words, it is partially effective, and the vaccine will need to be reformulated.
I had whooping cough two falls ago, and it was the worst month I have suffered in a while. Many think that the illegal immigrants are partially to blame as they have never been vaccinated. Global commerce is also to blame as there is more international travel these days, and various strains can easily jump continents now. No one thing is to blame, its more like a perfect storm at times.
We all can thank that goofball CHARLES DARWIN and his pseudoscience theories of evolution for these outbreaks! Curse you Darwin!!! LMAO
Vaccine critics have been screaming this for years. But the Pharma PR machine with backing of the CDC has been trying to blame the unvaccinated in a social war. They didn't want to open this can of worms because it might hurt compliance. They are all about propaganda, perception, and compliance.
Elizabeth, your comment makes absolutely NO sense. Vaccinated people get whooping cough because a new strain has developed. Could it be the new strain developed in response to the vaccines ?
What does the unvaccinated have to do with it ?
Actually, the outbreak of whooping cough cases in the northwest late last year was tied to the ever decreasing incidence of vaccination in that region. So OP was right. MSN had a nice article about it in December if you care to look it up.
However, this is about the 15 cases found in Philadelphia (15 out of nearly 40,000 reported annual cases). The vaccine still reduces severe illness, even if it does not completely prevent the disease. Vaccines are not magic bullets, they prep your immune system so you can more easily handle, clear and recover from infection.
Where do you think NEW strains come form? Magic? Unicorns? nooo....'this years model' is an upgrade from 'last years model' The reason polio is virtually non-existant in the US is almost everybody gets vaccinated. The un-vaccinated are most of whom catches diseases, mutates, and spread them.
Right on Elizabeth. Herd immunity is of extreme importance in these situations, as all those Moms in Marin County learned to their cost. If you can drive down the numbers of people who remain susceptible by using vaccination then the ability of the infection to undergo transmission also gets driven down to a point it may become zero. If however a minority of children do not get vaccinated then transmission continues. In such situations the pertussis bacterium is under selective genetic pressure to survive and part of this adaptation is to change major antigens so that antibodies [made to the vaccine] now do not work. If you do not vaccinate your kids you are actually enabling these mutations.
The real cause of these super strains like this whooping cough, are the 'goofballs' who will not take their medicine according to their doctor's directions, thereby training microbes to have resistances to medicines that used to affect them.
Herd immunity is a farce. Up until about 20 years ago vaccines were believed to last a lifetime, before the introduction of boosters.
So that means, depending on what vaccine your talking about and when it was introduced, there were multiple generations of Americans that weren't protected at all from the diseases they were vaccinated against once the initial vaccine wore off.
Blaming these outbreaks on the unvaccinated is ridiculous.
This was not cause and effect.
Like the above poster says. Herd immunity with whooping cough vaccine is a farce.
I had the whooping cough vaccine but caught the disease at age 14 when a particularly strong strain ran through my hometown. I was sick for 3 weeks and continued to cough for the next 6 months. This is not the first time whooping cough has infecting vaccinated patients. There were about 20 - 30 of us in highschool who caught it that year.
I was the same-actually, MOST of the neighbourhood kids were. This was the early 1990's, all of us were properly vaccinated, and we ALL got whooping cough.
I got the pertussis booster this past year--age 55--my doc recommended it, and particularly because of my age, and having been vaccinated so long ago as a child.
It's worth looking into.
I got diagnosed with the flue in Dec 2012,but i really had this whooping cough.I'm pretty sure i was vaccinated for this when i was in the Army in the sixties,but it wore off and i needed another shot i guess.They say kids used to give it to adults but now adults give it to kids.I'm not completly sure of this.You can correct me if you like.
A booster shot is recommended every 10 years, I believe.
Bruce -
You are correct, as is Jami.
Whooping cough (pertussis) is often misdiagnosed in adults as "bronchitis" or "smoker's cough" and can last 6 weeks or longer.
And don't forget all the illegals coming in and bringing all kinds of stuff with them.
Dumb comment.
Dumb comment? Maybe you should Google XDR-TB, MDR-TB and totally drug resistant TB which was recently found in India. Also Google drug resistant pneumonia which was first discovered in a hospital in Barcelona Spain in 1984. You can also Google drug resistant Malaria (Currently in Thailand), Chagas disease (Active in the Southern US), Dengue fever (Now active in Florida, Puerto Rico), West Nile (Showed up in NY in 1999 and is now found in most Southern US states), SARS the list goes on...
There was a reason immigrants to this country from the old world (Europe) were processed through Ellis island between 1892 until 1924. Part of the processing performed was not only to document the arriving immigrants but to isolate and treat the sick who posed a threat to others..
Today we have tropical diseases from Africa, South America, and Asia showing up in the United States unchecked. You plan on calling comments on illegal immigration "dumb" when someone from The Ivory Coast or Ghanna shows up in New York city with Ebola virus or Marburg virus and people are dropping dead in the street and hospitals are over capacity?
What's "dumb" is your uneducated way of thinking towards someone who brings up a valid 21st century issue regarding immigration.
This extremely naive idea that people have that we should just keep the borders wide open, grant every man woman and child already here citizenship and not strictly document who comes and goes in this country along with a complete health check is insane. We will see more and more diseases from developing countries showing up here in the USA and we will pay the price.
For the record, drug resistant whooping cough was found in a 18 day old baby at a hospital in Lyon France in June 2012. Seven months later we now apparently have it here in Pennsylvania. Yay!
People are traveling all over the world every day. I really don't think that illegal immigrants carry any more diseases into our country or any other country than tourists, students abroad, business people and legal immigrants... anyone who leaves one country and enters another is a potential carrier of disease into that accepting country. Everything you say is true, in my opinion, but doesn't further any argument that it's the "illegals" who are any more or less to blame. You also make this point when you say,
"For the record, drug resistant whooping cough was found in a 18 day old baby at a hospital in Lyon France in June 2012. Seven months later we now apparently have it here in Pennsylvania. Yay!"
I'm just doubting that case has anything to do with "illegals."
Yes, blaming illegal immigrants for this is like blaming every muslim for terrorism.
Why did they move away from the more effective vaccine in the first place? Cost? Profit? The all mighty dollar? What millions of profits weren't enough so they created a cheaper less expensive more profit driven vaccine? Oh, capitalism ... you will kill us all in the end.
They switched to a different vaccine because of some of the side effects from the cellular version of the vaccine. Seizures was one of these side effects. They weren't common, but they decided to switch. We now use the acellular version.
In 2010, I asked my doc for the vaccine because there was an increase in cases and it was predicted to get worse. They had discovered that the vaccine did not provide lifetime immunity and were recommending a new shot. In Dec, 2011, I still came down with whooping cough. Was sick as a dog for three months.
Lord points out exactly what is wrong with America and our attitudes towards health care. Immediately jumped to the conclusion that some company was trying to rip us off when the reality is the research improved and we were able to lessen adverse effects.
Despite popular opinion, health care professionals ARE actually concerned with health. Not everything is a conspiracy theory.
Seizures? In about .01 % of all recipients...
Yeah, us crazy aluminum foil hat wearing mothers who are actually READING science from crackpot places like the University of Kentucky, the University of Ohio, British medical journals, and independent labs that don't kowtow to pharma money are responsible for this mutation lol. Drug resistant mutations are nothing new. It's well known that the chronic over-prescription of antibiotics is leading to bacterial mutations. Gradual mutation is also a natural process. So let's keep vaccinating against an old strain of pertussis and blame educated moms and dads who take their and their kids health and wellness into their own hands for the outbreaks. Genius!
mutations and vaccinations are not mutually exclusive. You have no point
The article is about possible mutations and vaccinations. That's the point. What's YOUR point? Other than to begin a personal argument, I mean? Never mind. If your point is as meaningless as this comment, I'm not interested.
doesn't mean theyre related. What if the article was about bears and mentioned tennis shoes? Is there an automatic cause and effect relationship there?
see above
Svhadden that's weird, mutation from selective pressure is not mentioned one single time in the article. Go ahead and take that tinfoil hat off, you may absorb some life science knowledge through osmosis.
I'll take off my tinfoil hat if you put down the beer...
SVHadden, I like your style and attitude! Thanks for the laughs :) Corporate health care has stopped too many people from asking basic science and safety questions.
I'm wondering if you have already had the full blown Whooping Cough if you have antibodies against the new strain?
You have antibodies, but in theory they might be only partially effective against a new strain.
To what degree they would be protective remains to be seen.
Blame's on anti-bacterial cleaning agents including soap.
I'm praying for an effective treatment for this latest strain. Let's stop the blame game and support research.
Peace.
I blame Barack W. Clinton for this fiasco. If we could only inject more galvanizing politics into our daily lives, this whooping cough strain would be eradicated! /sarcasm
Actually, this is the nature of evolution and microbiology. It's been happening for thousands of years. The human immune system has defeated more illnesses than any drug ever has, and as we get smarter, more able to assist our immune systems, the "bugs" that infect us adapt. It's just evolution, no need to blame vaccines or people that choose not to vaccinate. I have a feeling some of the "bugs" we're exposed to on a daily basis would absolutely have ravaged society a thousand years ago. It's rather fascinating when you thing about it.
Hey, is this the strain that Noah carried on his ark or has it evolved?
vaccinate & get boosters all you want.....if you look up the news reports over the past year regarding Whopping Cough ALL of the outbreaks reported, 80 to 90% of those involved were "up to date" on all of the vaccinations.
unvaccinated are 8 times as likely to get whooping cough. The fact that there are more cases among vaccinated only reflects the fact that the vast majority of patients are vaccinated
The vaccinated are more likely to spread pertussis to a small child. Simply by the fact that more cases of whooping cough are in the vaccinated. The vaccine gives false confidence. See how this game is played?
No, they aren't. Ive explained this to you before.
You don't know the difference between real numbers and relative numbers.
you yourself are comparing the number of infections transmitted from vaccinated RELATIVE to unvaccinated
It helps to know what you are saying
If the MAJORITY of the cases are in the vaccinated then it stands that the most likely to spread said disease will come from the vaccinated.
But it's already been shown that this vaccine has a high failure rate with not much sustainability. Your argument is weak. The new argument is for a new vaccine. Get with the progressive times doctor. Stop defending a sinking ship. Change your argument.
Wrong. The majority of cases are in the vaccinated because the majority of all people are vaccinated. The unvaccinated spread at a far greater rate per capita
Not with the recommended boosters
Youve provided no evidence to the contrary.
Wow. The cdc and who and ama agree with me. No professional organization agrees with you. You stand alone. Well done
Wrong. Wrong Wrong. You have taken liberty to assume something that is not true without any such shred of evidence! We are talking about real raw not manipulative lies. The most cases of pertussis are in fact from people who are vaccinated. Period. No arguing. End of story. 89 cases of pertussis(vaccinated) will spread more cases than 11 people with pertussis (unvaccinated). This is reasonable. There is no real evidence to suggest otherwise.The only thing you can do is start subdividing and manipulating data into relationships. And then reformat these relationships into percentages which exaggerate the context of the original data.
890 cases of pertussis will most likely spread pertussis to more people than 110 cases.
The AMA use to endorse cigarettes and would not condone them even in light of evidence they caused cancer. They are a trade organization whose main purpose is to protect their trade. The CDC is a public health group. Public health mentality treats groups and numbers not individual people. They make blanketed recommendations geared towards the lowest common denominator.
Your argument from authority and consensus is not persuasive.
You are just being argumentative. This vaccine is a sinking ship. It is limited and it is failing. Stop blaming the people and start looking at public policy and science.
People should be given a choice and not coerced through propaganda. Doctors need to be honest with their patients instead of being on an agenda trip.
This is by far the most ignorant comment you have ever made. It is honestly laughable. Lets apply your logic to some common scenarios:
1) I can drive a golf ball 250 yards, so I should be on the PGA tour. It makes no difference that it takes me 10 shots, and tiger woods 1 shot, we have the same total yards, therefore, we are equally as good
2) I made a thousand dollars, and donald trump only made 500. It doesn't matter that mine was per day, and his was per second, only the TOTAL matters. Im richer than donald trump
3) School A has 50 teachers, and school B has 20 comparable teachers. School A has more teachers, so its clearly a better learning environment for students. It makes no difference that school A has 500 students and school B has 50 students, school A has more TOTAL teachers, so my kid has the best chance of face time with teachers at school A
4) You work for a large battery company. They are testing two new battery concepts, x and y. 5 of battery x in a flashlight cause a beam of moderate intensity. 2 of battery y cause the same level of intensity. The boss asks for your analysis.
Your answer would be to chose either, since both flashlights produced the same TOTAL light level. It doesn't matter than it took more than double of battery x to match the power of battery y, the same TOTAL energy was produced, so they are equal
and on and on. Honestly, answer me this question:
If a group of 100 vaccinated individuals cause 10 cases of pertussis, and a group of 10 unvaccinated individuals cause 8 cases, who is more infectious?
You act like this idea of "per capita" is some obscure, high concept statistical trick. Its honestly on the level of elementary school math. Everyone divides the total by the number in the group when such comparisons are necessary. Economists do it (per capita GDP), educators use it (teachers per student)
Apparently its too complicated for you
Are you sure your a doctor because this
is a non sequitur. It does not follow. It's just distracting the real world facts that more absolute cases occur in the vaccinated by far. By far. Your distracting rationalizations do not change this fact
Pertussis does not care if you got a failed vaccine or one that quickly waned afterwards or a vaccine that was for the wrong strain.
Pertussis doesn't say "Gee this person was vaccinated. I won't spread myself to other failed vaccine recipients. I won't spread myself to a 6 week old baby because my host believes his vaccine killed me."
It doesn't do that. It doesn't care what medical school you went to or what you were led to believe.
The fact is almost 90 out 100 pertussis cases are in the vaccinated. Making it 9 times more likely for that group to spread pertussis to other vaccine failures and 6 week olds.
Nothing you can say or post changes that. Nothing. Do you understand that? Comprende? Nada.
so if one group of 100 kids is responsible for 200 violent crimes, and a group of 5000 kids is responsible for 300 violent crimes, which kids are the most dangerous?
Irrelevant and fallacious analogy.
The fact is almost 90 out 100 pertussis cases are in the vaccinated. Making it 9 times more likely for that group to spread pertussis to other vaccine failures and 6 week olds.
Nothing you can say or post changes that. Nothing. Do you understand that? Comprende? Nada.
why?
No, its more likely to be spread from an unvaccinated person
I can't help it if you can't do math
ok...then just answer it unrelated to our previous discussion
One is more likely to "catch" whooping cough from a vaccinated person.
Nearly 90 cases out of 100 are in the vaccinated. 90 people spreading pertussis is more than 10 people spreading pertussis. Simple math. 18000 spreading pertussis is more than 2000 spreading pertussis.
What's more is that the vaccine does not directly stop the spread of pertussis even in the non clinical cases. The vaccine is for the toxin not the germ. Therefore theoretically all vaccinated individual can still carry and spread pertussis.
ok, then try this:
2 groups of unvaccinated individuals, completely randomized. One group is 10 people, the other group is 10,000 people
Which group is likely to cause or contract more cases of whooping cough and why?
Like I said the only thing you can do is try and rationalize and manipulate but you can't change the facts.
Real life isn't randomized. Disease risk is not homogenous.
But the vaccinated are more likely to spread pertussis than the unvaccinated. 9 times more likely. This is the data. actually even more likely because the vaccine doesn't stop transmission. So theoretically non clinical cases in the vaccinated can still transmit the bacteria.
just answer the question
18000 vaccinated cases of clinical pertuss vs 2000 unvaccinated cases will always spread more cases to more people.
I'll argue that it's quite higher than this ration because the vaccinated assume they could not possibly have pertussis and will more likely go into the public to infect other vaccinated peoples.
That is the answer. Nothing you can say or do will change that. Nothing. NADA!
Stop blaming the unvaccinated and start dealing with the science of vaccine failure.
Vaccination is a medical procedure with unavoidable risks and should remain an individual decision. No coercion no propaganda no fake science.
answer my question
Great whooping cough strain different and this year Illinois is mandating all children from 6th grade up get another vaccine for whooping cough before the start of the next school year. If it is a different strain, duh the vaccine is not going to work. Just another mandate for people and the legislators have no clue on science. How about eating healthy and being healthy for once instead of pushing vaccinations to stay healthy. When will people learn you cannot prevent every illness and that is just part of life.
Amen!
Too many of NBCNews.com so-called "articles" feature the word "may" in their headlines -- whooping cough strain MAY be drug resistant --- polluted air MAY cause low birth weight. How I long for the days of real journalism...
Western WA declared it an epidemic, but when my family went to the doc they told us it was flu and didn't test us, despite the very severe cough (coughing til you throw up and rib injuries). The docs also told us we weren't contagious, though we were all still coughing til we were doubled over. I finally requested a test for whooping cough after looking up symptoms on the internet and after we were all still coughing weeks later. Turns out we had it and the docs were pointlessly unhelpful (there is some treatment if caught early enough). Also the health dept said we just had a crappy doctor (clinic).
At least the health department figured that much out. But did they shut that clinic down?
Part of what many of those commenting may be missing is the ergo argument. The more people who get whooping cough the greater the opportunity for that "bug" to naturally mutate. Thus, the fewer people with vaccinations usually means a greater number of infections and, ergo the greater the prospect for mutation.
Similarly, the increased mis-use of antibiotics, the greater the opportunity for drug resistant mutation.
The science is absolutely agreed upon that vaccinations have saved exponentially greater number of lives than they've taken. This isn't some global pharma company conspiracy, put away the tinfoil hats.
Those who choose not to vaccinate are selfishly placing a burden on the rest of the collective population.
I won't deny the fact that vaccines are effective, and necessary in some cases.
The fact of the matter is that we're over vaccinated and over medicated here in America, and we're the least healthy nation in the Western world.
And the herd immunity argument is just not true. Up until recently, before the introduction of boosters, vaccines were believed to last a lifetime. That means there were generations that weren't protected anymore for years after the vaccines wore off. During that time were there significant outbreaks of the vaccine protected diseases ? No.
Have there been outbreaks amongst vaccinated populations, like the whooping cough ? Yes.
and those two facts are automatically connected? And regarding the over-medicated--its a chicken and egg scenario. Are we overmedicated, and thus unhealthy, or vice versa? I tend to think the latter
you make this statement, yet the evidence you cite is about the waning efficacy of vaccines. That does nothing to specifically refute the idea of herd immunity. And boosters have been around for awhile
all this proves is that vaccines, like everything else in life, are not perfect
Either way the medicine isn't working is it? The outcome is the same. Overmedicated and sick. Not overmedicated and healthy.
That is purely rhetorical. Nothing of value in that statement. The same statement can be made for a vaccine that works at ONE percent. "well, like everthing else in life, it's not perfect"
My point was you that common sense would lead one to believe that the population that is on the most prescription medicine and the most vaccinated would be the healthiest, no ? I wasn't attempting to connect the two directly, but there is definitely some link. Yes, we are over medicated. The United States, New Zealand, and Canada account for the consumption of 95% of the entire worlds prescription medicine. The prescription medicine epidemic is only part of the problem, the cost of medicine in America is out of control, health providers controlled by the pharmaceutical, health insurance, and medical equipment makers are another large problem.
How long have boosters been around ? Since the 90's ? Maybe the late 80's ? Vaccines have been around since the late 1800's and were believed to last a lifetime. So that means everyone that got a vaccine in say 1950 were only protected for a few years. So that means that entire group of people that got vaccinated in 1950 weren't protected after let's say 1960. Which proves the herd immunity argument is a farce since the herd wasn't protected for a LONG time with no major or significant outbreaks.
And how come when I was a child the CDC only recommended 13 shots, now I believe they recommend close to 50 ! My parents stop vaccinating me in my early teens and I never had any issues and there were never any outbreaks in my community.
The fear mongering is also out of control, the best example is the "Have you ever seen someone with polio ?" crowd. I have, but apparently the majority of the population never have and also has never done a shred of research on the diseases were supposed to be vaccinated for. Take polio for example, in rare cases it can cause paralysis, difficulty breathing, and even death. But in most cases it's a mild illness that causes only flu like symptoms that disappear on their own in 2-10 days. The misinformation is a disgrace.
Nine years ago when my daughter was in Fourth grade she contracted whooping cough from the neighbor girl. The neighbor did not believe in immunizations and home schooled their children. Her daughter almost drowned because she had a coughing fit and passed out in the pool. When taken to the hospital they diagnosed her with whooping cough and her mother still did not believe she had it. By that time my daughter was already exposed to it and my daughter was completely up to date on shots. Guess what? My daughter did get it and I called the doctors office and they did not want me to bring her in just keep her away from other people. She coughed so bad she would vomit. So anytime and everywhere we had a bucket in the car and at home. She missed a lot of school and to this day she is paying for it. She never had lung problems and was very athletic until this. Now she has to have inhalers all the time. So just because your immunized you are not fully protected. She is now from natural immunities but she had a cough that lasted 6 months. Even when she returned to school she would have to be allowed to leave when she would have lingering coughing fits because she would vomit. This is something she will forget and she would cry is the coughing ever going to end. They say about 100 days of cough but hers was much longer. Now they do boosters but I still am cautious when I hear a cough that sounds like whooping cough. It is very distinct.
Perhaps no vaccine for the whooping cough has ever existed. If so many stay contagious, may be it has all been one big placebo scam to make money?
People are traveling all over the world every day. I really don't think that illegal immigrants carry any more diseases into our country or any other country than tourists, students abroad, business people and legal immigrants... anyone who leaves one country and enters another is a potential carrier of disease into that accepting country. Everything you say is true, in my opinion, but doesn't further any argument that it's the "illegals" who are any more or less to blame.
My eyes are tired. I first read this as, New Whopping Cough Stain.