Ricerc@Sapienza

In the last twenty years, despite high vaccination coverage, epidemics of pertussis are occurring in both developing and developed countries. Many reasons could explain the pertussis resurgence: the increasing awareness of the disease, the availability of new diagnostic tests with higher sensitivity, the emergence of new Bordetella pertussis (B. pertussis) strains different from those contained in the current vaccines, the asymptomatic transmission of B. pertussis in adolescents and adults and the shorter duration of protection given by the acellular pertussis (aP) vaccine.

We conducted a study to determine the main traits of pertussis among unimmunized infants less than 6 months of age. From August 2012 to March 2015, 141 nasopharyngeal aspirates (NPAs) were collected from infants with respiratory symptoms attending 2 major hospitals in Rome. Clinical data were recorded and analyzed. Lab-confirmation was performed by culture and realtime PCR. B.

Pertussis is a respiratory infection caused by Bordetella pertussis that may be particularly severe and even lethal in the first months of life when infants are still too young to be vaccinated. Adults and adolescents experience mild symptoms and are the source of infection for neonates. Adoptive maternal immunity does not prevent pertussis in the neonate. We compared the specific immune response of mothers of neonates diagnosed with pertussis and mothers of control children.

Background: Whether viral coinfections cause more severe disease than Bordetella pertussis (B. pertussis) alone remains
unclear. We compared clinical disease severity and sought clinical and demographic differences between infants with
B. pertussis infection alone and those with respiratory viral coinfections. We also analyzed how respiratory infections
were distributed during the 2 years study.
Methods: We enrolled 53 infants with pertussis younger than 180 days (median age 58 days, range 17–109 days, 64.

Background: Pertussis infection can be severe in unvaccinated infants. A case-control study was conducted to investigate the potential role of breast-feeding in protecting young, unvaccinated infants from pertussis.

Purpose: This study was planned to collect evidences of familial pertussis transmission to infants younger than 6 months of age. Understanding the dynamics of transmission of pertussis in families is essential to plan effective prevention strategies that could be integrated in pertussis control. Methods: The seroprevalence of IgG antibodies to pertussis toxin (PT-IgG) and prolonged cough symptoms were evaluated in parents of 55 infants aged