089 - Treatment of pertussis with the New York State pertussis vaccine

Some investigators in 1936 questioned the effectiveness of any whooping cough vaccine developed thus far, though most thought they were helpful. So Thomas Bumbalo studied a vaccine produced by the New York Department of Health, made of killed bacteria.

The study was in children with siblings, half of whom got the vaccine and the other half didn't. All subjects had been exposed to pertussis though. There were four groups of subjects:

• those who were sick with whooping cough and were treated by vaccination
• those who were sick but were not treated with the vaccine
• those who had been exposed but hadn't yet shown symptoms, and were vaccinated
• those who had been exposed but weren't vaccinated

The first two groups both had 152 subjects, of similar ages and sexes and in the same families if possible. The latter two had 29 and 58 subjects, respectively. Bumbalo explained that mothers in group 3 were hesitant to have their children injected for no apparent reason, and:

"To quote the sentiment of many mothers, whooping cough is 'a mild disease which all kids get sooner or later and they might just as well get it over now.'"

Some things don't change.

So, the results: the average difference between the first two groups in how long they were sick was 32 hours, about 1.3 days. Not too great.

Of the second two, there were 5 cases (17%) in the vaccinated and 6 (10%) in the unvaccinated, though the average severity was milder in the treated. Still, not great.

Still, it wasn't a great study either. Vaccine therapy had already been pretty well demonstrated to be useless, and vaccinating right after the children had been exposed wouldn't help much either; there wouldn't be enough time to form a good immunity. So not much can be concluded.

Reference:
Bumbalo, T. S. Treatment of pertussis with the New York State pertussis vaccine. Am J Dis Child 52, 1390–1396 (1936).