Pertussis or whooping cough is a highly infectious respiratory disease caused by Bordetella pertussis. In vaccinating countries, infants, adolescents, and adults are relevant patients groups. A total of 707 clinical specimens were received from major hospitals in Malaysia in year 2011. These specimens were cultured on Regan-Lowe charcoal agar and subjected to end-point PCR, which amplified the repetitive insertion sequence IS481 and pertussis toxin promoter gene. Out of these specimens, 275 were positive: 4 by culture only, 6 by both end-point PCR and culture, and 265 by end-point PCR only. The majority of the positive cases were from ≤3 months old patients (77.1%) ( ). There was no significant association between type of samples collected and end-point PCR results ( ). Our study showed that the end-point PCR technique was able to pick up more positive cases compared to culture method. 1. Introduction Whooping cough is a major cause of the infant [1] and childhood mortality [2]. World Health Organization (WHO) reported about 16 million pertussis cases worldwide in 2008, in which 95% of cases occurred in developing countries and more than 100000 children died from this disease [1]. Pertussis still remains endemic despite the introduction of vaccination program in 1974 [3]. During 2003–2007, there were 43482 cases or an incidence of 4.1 per 100000 people reported from 20 European countries [4]. In the United States, the incidence of pertussis also increased from 3.53 in year 2007 to 5.54 in year 2009 [5]. Although pertussis is always classified as infants and children disease, an increasing number of cases in adolescents and adults group were also observed [2, 5]. According to the vaccination schedule of Malaysia, every citizen should be given vaccination at 2, 3, and 5 months old and a booster at 18 months old [6]. This is in line with the vaccination schedule recommended by WHO. Although there are two types of vaccines available, whole cell or acellular vaccine [6], the whole cell pertussis vaccine is the most widely used vaccine against pertussis [7]. The immunization coverage of three-dose pertussis vaccination is 95.3% [8]. Pertussis is a notifiable disease in Malaysia [9]. The incidence of pertussis has been less than 1 per 100000 people from 1989 to 2010 [10]. The clinical pertussis is defined by cough illness which last 2 weeks or more, with at least one of the symptoms of paroxysms of coughing, characteristic inspiratory whoop, and posttussive vomiting without apparent cause [11]. However, pertussis in adults and adolescents are rarely recognized
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