An excerpt from the full article below:
“An emerging strain of whooping cough has been identified, and is thought to be driving the latest outbreak of infection in Australia.
Scientists claim the new variant has significantly increased the incidence and severity of the disease, and has developed due to selection pressures from the current vaccine, resulting in the emergence of new and potentially more dangerous clones.
The prolonged whooping cough epidemic in Australia that began during 2008 has been predominantly caused by the new genotype,” said Ruiting Lan from the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, and lead author of the study recently published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. “These variants have also been found in other countries, suggesting that they have the potential to cause epidemics elsewhere.”
In Australia, an ongoing epidemic of the respiratory disease has caused a significant number of deaths, especially among babies under six months old. A national immunisation program has been in place since the 1950s, which has used the acellular vaccine (ACV) since 2000 to combat the disease. However, despite national campaigns ensuring a high vaccine uptake, the disease has recently reemerged as a serious public health threat.
The new findings indicate that there has been a significant increase in variants of the disease with a particular genetic signature. “This genotype was responsible for 31% of cases in the 10 years before the epidemic, and that’s now jumped to 84% – a nearly three-fold increase, indicating it has gained a selective advantage under the current vaccination regime,” said Lan.