Zehra Diyar Tamburaci Uslu, Mehmet Ceyhan, Ener Cagri Dinleyici, Zafer Kurugol, Bedriye Nuray Alpman, Eda Karadag Oncel, Venhar Gurbuz, Emre Aycan, Hasan Tezer and Belgin Gulhan
Background: Despite high vaccination coverage, pertussis continues to be a great public health problem. Adults and adolescents are source of infection for infants who are too young to be completely vaccinated. The aim of the study is detect if there is a household transmission of pertussis. Methods: Presence of Bordetella pertussis among the household contacts of the children who had had the positive result for Bordetella pertussis by real-time polymerase chain reaction was detected. Results: Of the 173 infants with clinical suspicion of pertussis, 48 (27.7%) turned out to be positive by PCR. The mothers of 19 (41.3% of all tested mothers) of them were also PCR positive for B. pertussis, being the family member most frequently infected. Conclusion: Despite high coverage of pertussis vaccination in Turkey, pertussis is prevalent both in incompletely protected infants and older children. High rate of presence of the bacteria in the household contacts depicts the importance of further pertussis booster vaccination in adolescents, adults and the targeted vaccination of the adults having close contacts with infants (cocoon strategy).