Active Immunization Against Whooping Cough With Various Specific Vaccines

Abstract

For about twenty-five years, ever since the earliest attempts to prevent whooping cough by the use of specific vaccines, there have been conflicting reports 1 as to their value. In efforts to make the vaccine more effective, changes were made in the method of preparation 2 and in the dose.3 The trend has been toward the use of increasingly larger doses of vaccines prepared from virulent or phase I strains.2bThe dose has been increased since 1912 from less than a billion bacilli 4 to 80 and 100 billion bacilli1e and more.5 As for the method of preparation, Sauer has placed a great deal of emphasis on the necessity of employing recently isolated strains in preference to stock strains, even though their antigenicity has been maintained under suitable cultural conditions.6 In addition, some investigators7 have emphasized the From the Bureau of

Pertussis Antibodies in Pregnant Women

“…Three of them gave a history of pertussis in childhood; 15 probably had had pertussis in childhood, and 11 had no history of pertussis. Siegel15 reported no protection clinically with 50,000,000,000 bacilli or less.…”