Pertussis Hospitalizations Fall Following Vaccination Guidelines

Following the 2012 guidelines from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommending that all pregnant women receive the tetanus toxoid, reduced diphtheria toxoid, and acellular pertussis (Tdap) vaccine, the rate of hospitalizations for pertussis among infants too young for the vaccine fell by nearly 50%, according to recent research.

For their analysis, the researchers used deidentified patient-level data from the Truven Health Analytics Marketscan Commercial databases on 2,031,775 infants with a birth hospitalization, 94.6% of which were enrolled for at least 59 days.

Overall, compared with the 2009-2012 rate of pertussis hospitalizations (8.4 per 100,000), the 2013-2017 rate decreased by 48% to 3.3 per 100,000 (relative risk 0.52; 95% CI, 0.31-0.89).

“These findings underscore the public health importance of maternal Tdap vaccination in reducing pertussis burden among young infants. Clinicians should continue to promote maternal Tdap vaccination and find ways to overcome barriers to vaccination during pregnancy,” they concluded.

—Michael Potts

Reference:

Boulet SL, Chamberlain AT, Biswas HH, et al. Trends in infant pertussis hospitalizations in the United States, 2009-2017. JAMA. 2019;322(21):2134-2136. doi:10.1001/jama.2019.15577.