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Antibiotics for whooping cough (pertussis) First published: July 18, 2007; This version published: 2011. Review content assessed as up-to-date: January 17, 2011. Whooping cough is a highly contagious disease caused by pertussis bacteria and may lead to death, particularly in infants less than 12 months of age. Although it can be prevented by routine vaccination, it still affects many people. Thirteen trials involving 2197 participants were included in this review. We found that several antibiotic treatments were equally effective in eliminating the bacteria infecting patients, but they did not alter the clinical outcome. There was insufficient evidence to decide whether there is benefit for treating healthy contacts. Side effects were reported with antibiotics and they varied from one antibiotic to another. The result of the review should be interpreted with caution since this review is based on a limited number of trials and some of these trials involved small numbers of participants. Treatment of the cough in whooping cough First published: January 20, 2010; This version published: 2010. Review content assessed as up-to-date: April 08, 2009. Whooping cough, or pertussis, is an infectious bacterial disease. It affects infants and small children, and can be life‐threatening in unimmunised infants younger than three months of age. Infants with whooping cough experience severe bouts of coughing and vomiting which can lead to dehydration and difficulty breathing. Routine vaccination can prevent illness and protect infants and children against death and admission to hospital. Whooping cough also affects older children and adults, and new vaccine strategies are being developed to improve coverage, as neither immunisation nor natural infection result in lifelong immunity. New improved laboratory methods and higher awareness amongst doctors have helped improve surveillance of community outbreaks. These methods have also helped improve diagnosis as antibiotics can limit the course of the disease if given in the early stage of the illness. In the later stages, antibiotics have little individual benefit and treatment with corticosteroids, salbutamol, pertussis specific immunoglobulin (antibodies to increase the body's resistance) or antihistamines has been used in an attempt to reduce the cough while the disease runs its course. We found that current trials did not provide enough evidence to determine whether these drugs can reduce the cough in whooping cough. Acellular vaccines for preventing whooping cough in children First published: January 19, 2011; This version published: 2011. Review content assessed as up-to-date: April 20, 2009 Whooping cough (pertussis) can be a serious respiratory infection. Vaccines made from killed whole Bordetella pertussis (B. pertussis) were developed, but they could cause serious and permanent nervous system disorders such as convulsions, encephalopathy and hypotonic‐hyporesponsive episodes, as well as minor adverse events, such as anorexia, drowsiness, fever, irritability and fretfulness, prolonged crying, vomiting, injection site pain/redness/swelling/induration. This led to a fall in immunisation rates which resulted in an increase in the incidence of whooping cough. New vaccines were developed which contain acellular purified B. pertussis antigens and have fewer adverse effects (less fever, irritability and injection site pain). This updated review of trials found that multi‐component vaccines which contain acellular pertussis components are effective, with less adverse effects than whole‐cell pertussis vaccines. One and two‐component vaccines are less effective.