4. HOPE FOR INFANT WHOOPING COUGH PATIENTS

摘要

There were 32,971 cases of pertussis, known as whooping cough for the violent coughing it generates, reported to the US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. That number was 15% greater than the 28,639 cases reported to the CDC a year earlier. Severe pertussis is particularly dangerous for infants because there is no specific therapeutic for these children who are too young for vaccination. Indeed, 1% of infants in the US infected with pertussis perish. A team of researchers based at the University of Texas at Austin and their counterparts at Synthetic Biologics Inc. in Rockville, Maryland, have developed two antibodies that promise to treat or prevent pertussis in even the youngest patients.