Bordetella

Abstract

Whooping cough or pertussis is a highly contagious disease of the human respiratory tract caused by the strictly human pathogen Bordetella pertussis. It was described for the first time by Guillaume de Baillou after an epidemic in Paris in 1578.1 As the disease became widely known it was given different names. The Italians spoke of the "dog bark, " while in England it became known as the "chin cough" or "kin cough, " later to be called whooping cough. The Chinese called it the "100 day cough" because of the protracted course of the disease. Thomas Sydenham first used the term "infantum pertussis" in 1670, "pertussis" meaning a violent cough of any kind.2 Although the organism was detected microscopically in the sputum of a patient with whooping cough by 1900, Bordet and Gengou reported the isolation of B. pertussis for the first time in 1906.3 In the twentieth century, pertussis was one of the most common childhood diseases and a major cause of childhood mortality in the world. Before the introduction of the pertussis vaccine in the 1940s, more than 200, 000 cases of pertussis were reported annually in the United States.4 Between 1914 and 1923, Hess, Luttinger, and Madsen carried out the first anti-pertussis vaccine trials.5, 6 The first vaccine developed against pertussis contained whole-cell inactivated bacteria. Since widespread use of this pertussis vaccine began, incidence has decreased more than 80% compared with the prevaccine era. These first vaccines were developed when it was still unclear as to which specific antigens contributed to immunity. In addition, there were great differences among the approaches applied by the different manufacturers with respect to strains used, culture conditions, and inactivation procedures. As a result, vaccines with a wide range of efficacies were developed.