Newborn Nearly Dies Contracting Whooping Cough

Dec. 2, 2011— -- Leena was born a happy healthy baby, but two weeks into her life, she developed a severe cough. Doctors told her mother, Dr. Lisa Farkouh, that Leena only had a cold, but the symptoms continued and worsened.

After a battery of tests and a cough so severe that it would leave Leena unable to breathe, she was diagnosed with whooping cough -- an extremely contagious bacterial disease that causes violent coughing -- and pneumonia at 6 weeks old. She was admitted into the neonatal intensive care unit.

"Death rates are so high in babies who get whooping cough because they have no immunity and they haven't started their vaccinations," said Farkouh, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Denver. "She coughed for six months, but luckily she's now a healthy 2-year-old. My concern is that other babies out there won't be as lucky."

Farkouh said she has racked her brain trying to figure out how Leena contracted whooping cough. She said the baby was not exposed to unhealthy people who visited. She assumes that someone in the community exposed Leena to it.

Dr. Anne Gershon, director of pediatric infectious disease at Columbia University Medical Center, confirmed Farkouh's belief that babies often come down with whooping cough, also called pertussis, through others in the community.

"These days, adults are getting pertussis and some doctors are unaware of this or don't think it is possible for an adult to have this infection," said Gershon. "Today, a lot of pertussis probably spreads from teenagers and adults who have lost immunity to this infection. We have also come to realize that having had pertussis once in the past does not necessarily mean that it won't occur again."

Farkouh, who has become an advocate for whooping cough vaccinations, said pertussis, the medical term for whooping cough, saw a 2,000 percent increase in the U.S. in 2010.

In response to the push for vaccinations, California and nearly a dozen other states recently passed laws that require parents to prove that their middle- and high-school aged children received a whooping cough vaccination. The law was prompted by a whooping cough outbreak that killed 10 babies and sickened about 9,000 people last year in California.

While people of all ages can come down with whooping cough, even if they've been vaccinated, it's particularly dangerous for newborns' systems because they don't have the immunity or vaccine to fight off the infection. Studies show that about 75 percent of newborns that come down with whooping cough get it from a family member. Eighty-three percent of all deaths from pertussis between 2004 and 2008 were in children less than three months old.

Because of the high rate of whooping cough in young infants, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently recommended that pregnant mothers get vaccinated with Tdap, a vaccine to protect against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.

"The mother then passes her antibodies to the baby before they are born, and this helps protect the baby against getting whooping cough prior to the time that the infant gets the first three doses of the vaccine," said Dr. Jon Abramson, chair of the advisory committee on immunization practices of the CDC.