Booster shot OK'd for whooping cough

WASHINGTON — Whooping cough was supposed to be vanquished by infant vaccination, but instead new cases of this dangerous infection are skyrocketing, particularly among preteens and teenagers.

It turns out that the vaccine babies and young children get wears off as they grow up. And while older patients usually recover, the hacking is so violent it can break a rib and sometimes lives up to its nickname of the 100-day cough. Worse, sufferers can easily spread the illness to newborns — and whooping cough can kill infants.

Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first booster shot — GlaxoSmithKline's Boostrix — to renew adolescents' protection against whooping cough, promising to help them avoid weeks of hacking misery and stem the illness' spread.

The shot will be in doctors' offices this summer, "just in time for back-to-school," said Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a vaccine specialist for the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. "This new vaccine will be critical."

It's just a first step: Adults may be rolling up their sleeves for a booster soon, too. Later this year, Glaxo competitor Sanofi Pasteur expects approval of its own booster against pertussis, whooping cough's formal name, one for adults as well as adolescents.

But Boostrix is expected to make a big dent in pertussis' resurgence because it's aimed at older kids who are in the doctor's office anyway, and it doesn't require an extra injection, explained Dr. Gary Marshall of the University of Louisville School of Medicine.

Children already are supposed to get a booster shot against two other diseases — tetanus and diphtheria — sometime between ages 10 and 18. Boostrix puts protection against pertussis, whooping cough's formal name, into that same shot.

"The beauty of it is that it's really the same visit, the same age, essentially the same shot except it includes the added protection," said Marshall, a Glaxo consultant who himself caught whooping cough as a medical resident in 1986 and lost three weeks of work.

FDA approval allows Glaxo to begin selling the shots. The company expects Boostrix to be in physicians' offices by June, but wouldn't release a price.

The shot also must be added to the official childhood vaccination schedule that is followed by pediatricians and other physicians, a step that ensures insurance coverage. A committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to take that step in June.