COVID-19 in children: Could pertussis vaccine play the protective role?

ABSTRACT: While COVID-19 continues to spread across the globe, diligent efforts are made to understand its attributes and dynamics to help develop treatment and prevention measures. The paradox pertaining to children being the least affected by severe illness poses exciting opportunities to investigate potential protective factors. In this paper, we propose that childhood vaccination against pertussis (whooping cough) might play a non-specific protective role against COVID-19 through heterologous adaptive responses in this young population. Pertussis is a vaccine-preventable infectious disease of the respiratory tract and it shares many similarities with COVID-19 including transmission and clinical features. Although pertussis is caused by a bacterium (Bordetella pertussis) while COVID-19 is a viral

SUBMITTER: Ismail MB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7521348 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature