Pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough, is experiencing a resurgence, and its tiniest victims are not armed to battle the contagious respiratory infection.
Kim Fortner, M.D., assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and her colleagues in the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program want to change that.
The group recently embarked on a study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to test the tolerance of repeated dosing with the Tdap vaccination during pregnancy in hopes that the overall benefit provides protection to newborns.