Whooping cough, twenty years from acellular vaccines introduction

Clinical pertussis resulting from infection with B. pertussis is a significant medical and public health problem, despite the huge success of vaccination that has greatly reduced its incidence. The whole cell vaccine had an undeniable success over the last 50 years, but its acceptance was strongly inhibited by fear, only partially justified, of severe side effects, but also, in the Western world, by the difficulty to enter in combination with other vaccines: today multi-vaccine formulations are essential to maintain a high vaccination coverage. The advent of acellular vaccines was greeted with enthusiasm by the public health world: in the Nineties, several controlled vaccine trials were car…