Sources and clinical characteristics of infant pertussis in China: increasing contribution of siblings

作者：Feng Luo, S. Zheng, Yang Zhou, Yao Zhu, Ying Su, Rongrong Dai, Chunzhen Hua, Hangjie Zhang, Hanqing He · 发表于：BMC Infectious Diseases · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1186/s12879-025-10536-y · 被引用次数：5 · 研究领域：Bacterial Infections and Vaccines、Pneumonia and Respiratory Infections、Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy

While parents were traditionally the main reservoir for infant pertussis, transmission sources may have shifted with China’s multi-child policy. Our study aimed to investigate the household transmission patterns and clinical characteristics of pertussis in infants. We investigated infant pertussis patients (aged ≤ 6 months) diagnosed at a hospital (Children’s Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine) from 1 January to 1 May 2024. The laboratory diagnosis of pertussis was confirmed through bacterial culture. We collected basic and clinical information and conducted a telephone survey to investigate the transmission patterns within their households. A total of 275 infant pertussis cases were identified, including 162 (58.9%) infants aged ≤ 3 months. A total of 188 households completed the transmission pattern survey, of which 121 households had two or more children. The clinical characteristic analysis indicated that infants aged ≤ 3 months had more severe disease, with higher proportion of paroxysmal cyanosis (12.4% vs. 3.5%), elevated leukocyte count (13.3 vs. 9.8 × 10 9 /L), and prolonged hospital stay (10.0 vs. 5.5 days) (all P < 0.05). The household survey revealed significant differences in the distributions of first and source cases between single-child and multi-child households ( P < 0.001). In multi-child households, the primary sources of pertussis transmission to infants were siblings aged 3–12 years, accounting for 46.4% of cases, while adults accounted f...