Cough Comes Back
ATLANTA -- Whooping cough, which dropped steadily in the United States for much of the 20th century, has made a comeback in the last 20 years, the government reported Thursday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it recorded nearly 8,000 cases in 2000, up from about 2,000 a year in the early 1980s.
The CDC said the increase in adult and adolescent cases occurred mostly because doctors are better at recognizing and diagnosing the disease, which can produce a cough strong enough to break a rib.
But the agency said the increase among infants is probably real. Infants, who account for about 30% of all U.S. cases, have the highest whooping cough rate in the country--55 cases for every 100,000 babies.
The CDC’s Dr. Kris Bisgard said experts are not entirely sure what might be causing the increase in infant cases--only that more infants are apparently being exposed to coughing illnesses.
Whooping cough, or pertussis, is a bacterial infection that looks like a cold at first. Infants are particularly vulnerable during their first six months, before they have completed their first three doses of vaccine.
There is a national shortage of whooping cough vaccine that, the CDC said, will probably persist until at least midyear.
The vaccine was developed in the 1940s, when the United States at times recorded more than 200,000 cases a year.
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