Whooping cough is far more common among school-aged children thanpreviously thought and can even hit those who have been vaccinatedagainst the disease, a new study has found.
The research, by Oxford University's department of primary care, foundthat 37 per cent of children with coughs that they studied had whoopingcough but almost 86 per cent of these had been immunised against theillness.
The paper, Whooping Cough in School Age Children with Persistent Cough:Prospective cohort study in primary care, suggested that whooping coughwas "endemic" among younger school-aged children in the UK and couldaffect older children aged 12 and upwards.
Even immunised children could be capable of catching whooping cough andpassing it on to newborn siblings "with potentially devastatingconsequences", the study said.
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