Alternative whooping cough vaccines: A minireview

Abstract

Bordetella pertussis, the aetiological agent of an acute upper respiratory tract disease of humans, “whooping cough”, can infect all age groups with adolescents and adults acting as major source of transmission of this pathogen to infants. This transmission is promoted by the fact that adolescents and adults do not exhibit the characteristic cough, the infection being either asymptomatic or manifested as a mild but persistent upper respiratory tract infection. It is established now that both antibodies and cell-mediated immune [CMI] responses are crucial for protection against whooping cough, the former being important in the early phase of the disease, with the latter being important forlong-term protection. The protection offered by vaccination with the currently-marketed acellular pertussis vaccines is predominantly due to antibodies against vaccine antigens associated with a Th2-polarised immune response and has been found to be relatively short-term protection. There is an urgent need to develop alternative vaccines capable of inducing both protective antibody and CMI responses particularly given the resurgence of this vaccinepreventable disease in infants and children worldwide. While current strategies are aimed at the development of recombinant vaccines using an adjuvant that may stimulate both arms of the immune response, no discovery of a cost-effective and non-toxic adjuvant to improve protection against pertussis has been reported thus far. This reviewdetails the oral presentation on alternative whooping cough vaccines and their future potential delivered at the 2nd World Conference on Vaccines and Vaccination organised by the OMICS Publishing Group.