Whooping Cough at Your Age? It’s Quite Possible!

A friend of mine, no longer a child, told me she’d just had 9 weeks of misery with pertussis – that’s whooping cough to us older people. Childhood whooping cough has decreased over the years, thanks to widespread immunization. By the 1970s there were only about 1000 cases a year reported in the USA. But since then it’s rebounded, up to about 35,000 cases a year. And many more may be undiagnosed or just not reported.

The disease in children begins like a cold – running nose, sore throat, and slight fever, which then progresses to a dry, hacking cough. A slight stimulus can provoke a prolonged paroxysm of coughing, ending with a sharply indrawn breath: the “whoop”. Complications – usually infections – are common.

Adults don’t usually whoop with pertussis, but the coughing is extremely distressing, and can result in vomiting, urinary incontinence, and even a broken rib! It’s like a cold that won’t go away, associated with a severe dry cough that goes on for up to 10 weeks. Infectious complications are less common than in children.

Fortunately my friend had an astute doctor who diagnosed her promptly, and an antibiotic was able to block any infection. It seems that childhood immunizations wear off, leaving a large number of adults today who are susceptible to ‘non-whooping’ cough. A new pertussis vaccine for adults is now in development . . .