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Maternal pertussis antibodies protected infants against disease
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Infants may have some protection against pertussis when their mothers are given a booster vaccination, according to results of a recently published study.
Ulrich Heininger, MD, and colleagues of University Children’s Hospital Basel, Switzerland, and the German National Reference Center for Bordetella infections report that infant vaccination is the best protection against pertussis; however, the vaccine does not reach 80% to 90% effectiveness until after the third dose. The researchers compared 20 cases of PCR-confirmed B. pertussis with 80 matched controls and found evidence that pertussis antibodies crossed the placenta.
Ulrich Heininger
“Median anti-[pertussis toxin], anti-[filamentous hemagglutinin], and anti-[pertactin] IgG antibody values were consistently lower in cord blood serum specimens of cases than in their controls with values of 10.5 (95% CI, 6-31) and 13.5 (<2-83) anti-[pertussis toxin] IU/mL, 14.5 (4-141) and 18 (4-117) anti-[filamentous hemagglutinin] IU/mL, and 6 (<2-33) and 9 (2-63) anti-[pertactin] IU/mL, respectively,” the researchers wrote.
The researchers said mean and median antibody values were not statistically significant, but they support giving pregnant women a pertussis booster during pregnancy.
Disclosure: Heininger and one other researcher report financial ties to the Global Pertussis Initiative, which is supported with an unrestricted grant by Sanofi-Pasteur, Lyon, France.
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