Protocol for Pertussis Immunisation and Food Allergy (PIFA): a case-control study of the association between pertussis vaccination in infancy and the risk of IgE-mediated food allergy among Australian children.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Atopic diseases, including food allergy, have become a predominant cause of chronic illness among children in developed countries. In Australia, a rise in hospitalisations among infants coded as anaphylaxis to foods coincided with the replacement of whole-cell pertussis (wP) vaccine with subunit acellular pertussis (aP) vaccine on the national immunisation schedule in the late 1990s. Atopy is characterised by a tendency to mount T helper type 2 (Th2) responses to otherwise innocuous environmental antigens. Compared with infants who receive aP as their first pertussis vaccine, those who receive wP appear less likely to mount Th2 immune responses to either vaccine or extraneous antigens. We therefore speculate that removal of wP from the vaccine schedule contributed to t

SUBMITTER: Estcourt MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5878256 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature