By JANE E. BRODY Personal Health Jane Brody on health and aging. Chances are, you think you have never had whooping cough, the bacterial infection known medically as pertussis. Chances are, you're wrong. Children get five doses of the DTaP vaccine against diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus before entering school. But even with widespread vaccination, "almost everyone has had pertussis," Dr. James D. Cherry, an expert in whooping cough, told me. "Mild illness is almost always overlooked. More than 90 percent of cases don't get recognized." Neither the vaccine nor the actual illness confers lifelong immunity, and every three to five years there is an epidemic of this disease in the United...
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