Complications

Among the most common complications are bronchitis and pneumonia, although these are caused by other pathogens. Other possible complications are:

Otitis media
Lung damage (burst pulmonary alveoli)
SeizuresEpilepsy

Diagnosis

If the disease is already in the conculsivum stage, the diagnosis is easy to make on the basis of the coughing attacks. If necessary, the bacteria can be detected by means of a throat swab (e.g. of the nasal mucosa). Antibodies formed by the body against the pathogens can only be detected in the blood 2 – 4 weeks after the onset of the disease.

Risk of infection

The pertussis bacterium is transmitted by droplet infection. Droplets, sometimes not visible to the naked eye, from the airways (lungs, trachea, larynx, mouth, throat and nose) of infected persons contain bacteria. If enough of these enter the respiratory tract of a healthy person, they can become infected.

The infection can also be passed on, from hand to hand so to speak, via nasal secretions, saliva or droplets that land on the hand held out to the patient when coughing. Unfortunately, the disease is contagious especially in the first, very unspecific stage.Often, however, the diagnosis is only made in the second stage, when the classic cough attacks occur. At this time, the affected person usually already had a lot of contact with people who might have been infected. The risk groups include infants (as the disease often takes a severe or even fatal course), small children and school children, as they are more likely to be infected in kindergarten or school. People with many children in the working environment (e.g. kindergarten teachers) also have an increased risk of infection.

Whooping cough in adults

Although whooping cough is considered a childhood disease, adults also suffer from whooping cough again and again. In general, a pertussis infection in adults follows the same course as in children, but often shows slightly different symptoms. The symptoms that are generally easy to recognize as dangerous even by laymen, such as high fever, which occur in children, are often absent in adults.

The coughing attacks typical of whooping cough are also significantly less frequent in adults than in children and infants. It is also usually not possible to classify the typical stages in adults. This circumstance leads to the fact that pertussis in adults is often not recognized correctly or in time, which can lead to an increased rate of complications.

Typical symptoms in adults are nausea, choking and vomiting. General fatigue, loss of appetite and sleep disorders may also occur. In principle, however, the disease is much less dangerous and severe in adults than in infants and especially babies.

As a rule, an adult person with a normally functioning immune system is expected to have only a mild course, or even a course without symptoms (clinically inapparent). In the western world, pertussis is also a recurrent disease in adults, although pertussis is considered a typical childhood disease. On the one hand, this is due to the fact that a childhood disease is a disease that occurred only in children for a long time before widespread vaccinations were possible.

This has two reasons. Either the children survived the disease well and then developed a specific immune defense against the pathogens (cf. chickenpox) or the disease was so severe that the children died.

Nowadays, most children are vaccinated, which is why severe courses of the disease have become rarer due to the rarer occurrence of the disease (even today, however, infant mortality from whooping cough infections is still about 70%!) However, the effect of the vaccination can fade after years, which is why infections can occur again. Parents and people who work with many children (e.g. kindergarten teachers) are particularly at risk, as the infection can also be transmitted by vaccinated children without them becoming ill themselves. Prophylactic administration of medication to adults can therefore be useful in case of contact with infected persons despite the supposed protection provided by the vaccination. Even an infection that has already been through the disease only provides protection for about ten to twenty years.