Home / Treatment / Treatment of pertussis

Treatment of pertussis

Whooping cough is an infectious disease that has the acute form. The causative agent of whooping cough is B. Pertussis. These microorganisms spread by airborne droplets. The disease has a cyclic course and is accompanied by bouts of coughing.

Most doctors rightly considered pertussis a disease which managed to overcome "yesterday". To understand the scale of the losses caused by the pertussis population, we should remember that in the mid-twentieth century in the USSR from 100 000 population of 428 people had been infected. Mortality was 0.25%, which is quite high. However, several decades have passed since the development of a vaccine and the number of human cases decreased to 25 times, and the number of deaths in 1000 times.

In recent years, experts also note that the number of cases continues to go down. In Russia in 2004, whooping cough has infected 11 099 people (per 100 000 population, and 7.7), the vast majority of them children, whose number is 10 315 people (per 100 000 children – 44,6). In large cities the number of cases of whooping cough people exceeds the same performance compared with smaller settlements. This is due to the high level of migration flow of people, density of population, facilitating the spread of infection.

Doctors point out that in recent years has increased the number of children who fall ill with atypical and mild pertussis (age group 7-14 years). Wary of doctors in terms of the spread of the infection among children of this age at the moment reduced, which becomes a favorable factor for the development of infection. Late diagnosis affects the outcome of the disease.

Bordetella pertussis is an aerobic bacterium that causes the development of pertussis. It is very finicky to environmental conditions. To grow a colony of bacteria need special media: agar potato-glycerol agar or casein-coal. Blood agar allows bacteria to grow slowly. Only on the third day appear smaller colonies have a greyish shiny color. To suppress the growth of other microorganisms, the scientists added in the culture medium Cephalexin.

In the external environment pertussis wand very quickly dies, so the sowing must be done without delay, immediately after the collection of sputum for analysis. Bacteria are susceptible to disinfectants, but at the same time in dry sputum can retain its viability for several hours.

The bacterium has 8 agglutinogens,leading is antigen 1.2.3. Scientists have identified serotype 4 bacteria: 1.0.0.; 1.2.3.; 1.0.3.; 1.2.0. For the past 10 years is dominated by microorganisms 1.0.3 and 1.2.0. They are distinguished from children who were vaccinated and provoke the development of mild or atypical forms of pertussis. From unvaccinated infants allocated 1.2.3 serotypes to induce the development of severe disease.

Bacterial wall pertussis sticks includes the following components:

  • Isotoxin.
  • Filamentary hemagglutin.
  • Proektnoye agglutinogens.
  • Tracheal particular.
  • Adenilatziklaznuu toxin.
  • Dermonecrotic.
  • The outer membrane protein BrKa.
  • The lipopolysaccharide.
  • Gistaminovymi factor.

The content of the article:


Treatment of pertussis in children

Ability to rid the body of the typical causative agents of whooping cough are almost there. And the reason lies not in the fact that modern science has not been able to develop medications, and that the time for their reception in most cases is missed.

The maximum activity of the pertussis sticks are showing for 10-12 days after a person is infected. If you start to give to a child or adult antibiotic in this period, you will be able to safely get rid of the infection and also to prevent the occurrence of paroxysmal cough in the future. However, to diagnose the disease in this period is extremely difficult. Cough immediately after infection is absent, and other symptoms of pertussis are similar to usual respiratory viral infection.

The bacterium, which causes whooping cough, not able to form a resistance to antibiotics. Therefore, if it is to identify the early stages of the disease, can be applied to virtually any antibiotic and it will be destroyed. Thus it will be able to prevent the development of serious complications.

However, it is almost impossible, as the cough manifests only after the prodromal period. In this phase, give the patient antibiotic no longer makes sense, as Bordetella so begins to lose strength and graduallyexcreted from the body.

Therefore, the result are not encouraging: for the treatment of whooping cough there, but the time to apply it fails.

The administration of antibacterial drugs to prevent

Although with antibiotics to treat both adults and children from pertussis is often not possible for the reasons described above, however, they can be used prophylactically. The drug of choice is Erythromycin.

Pediatrician E. O. Komarovsky: "the Use of antibiotics prophylactically is unacceptable, but that whooping cough is one of the rare exceptions to this rule. Erythromycin has been the drug of choice No. 1. It not only effective but also inexpensive and virtually secure. Erythromycin does not adversely impact on the gastrointestinal tract, the liver, so pediatricians around the world recommend to use it with the purpose of preventing the spread of whooping cough among the population".

Independently acquire and use an antibiotic without medical advice is not followed. It is prescribed when the condition that a healthy person had contact with a patient who exhibited the diagnosis of "whooping cough". First of all it concerns those cases when in a family a child is sick. In this situation, all adults with a preventive purpose it is recommended to take Erythromycin. It should be remembered that the pertussis bacteria are susceptible all the people. Therefore, provided that the vaccination was carried out for a long time, and the child diagnosed with whooping cough, you need to start a prophylactic course of antibiotic therapy.


Whether to get vaccinated against whooping cough?

Whooping cough is a deadly disease for children under the age of 2 years. This is due to the underdevelopment of the muscles of the respiratory organs, so the kids can't hardly stand paroxysmal cough onsets of the disease. In connection with this fact the first vaccination against pertussis children put first time in 3 months.

When a child is infected before the age of 3 months, it is urgently hospitalitynet. Otherwise, the risk of death is very high.

As a rule, children are administered the vaccine in the compositionDTP vaccination. Parallel to the little patient will be protected from tetanus and diphtheria.

Immunity to disease was maintained for 3-5 years, so you should not rely on life-long protection. In connection with this fact, many parents wonder about the necessity of introduction of re-vaccination to a child at an older age.

Doctors strongly recommend not to refuse from revaccination, because it is in childhood whooping cough very hard. And the younger the child, the more dangerous form of the disease will haunt him. While an adult with whooping cough just will cough for several months, the kid faces death.

Until that moment, had not yet been invented vaccination, pertussis has claimed the lives of children very often. This disease stood as the first causes of child mortality. Thanks to vaccination was able to reduce the number of child deaths in 45 times! However, even now the babies still die from whooping cough. The main cause of death was the refusal of parents to vaccinate.