key: cord-1025360-03dyf9zn
authors: Renzi, Samuele; Clementi, Massimo; Racca, Sara; Mucci, Milena; Beccaria, Paolo; Borghi, Giovanni; Landoni, Giovanni; Zangrillo, Alberto
title: Is Bordetella pertussis co-infecting SARS-CoV-2 patients?
date: 2020-11-28
journal: Braz J Anesthesiol
DOI: 10.1016/j.bjane.2020.09.008
sha: 4c0b8a3609bb4c835a5a98a594675958fe4b7a2d
doc_id: 1025360
cord_uid: 03dyf9zn

nan

Bordetella pertussis (B. pertussis) is a gram-negative respiratory coccobacillus that still represents a significant (yet largely preventable) cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. It is well known that an infection with B. pertussis does not confer long-lasting protective immunity; this is also true in case of vaccination, as the antibody levels progressively wane. 1 While B. pertussis is generally considered a potentially life-threatening agent in children with less than 3 months of life, there has been increasing evidence that other categories of patients can also be severely affected by the disease, especially seniors. 2 As a result, some authors have recently hypothesized the possibility of overlooking a coinfection with B. pertussis in patients diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia. The clinical symptoms of these two diseases are in fact partially overlapping; moreover, Bordetella pertussis infections are frequently associated with respiratory viruses, including other types of human coronaviruses. 3 Therefore, we aimed to screen for B. pertussis 10 adult patients admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of our large tertiary university hospital 4 for the management of severe SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia.

All patients underwent serologies for B. pertussis, while 8 were also screened through PCR assays on a nasopharyngeal swab, as molecular testing is the gold standard diagnostic for this disease. 5 These patients were found to have negative PCR for B. pertussis DNA (Table 1) . Furthermore, although the interpretation of Bordetella pertussis' serologies is challenging in the vaccine era, there was no serologic evidence of recent infection in our cohort.

Based on this limited, yet insightful experience, we believe that a coinfection with B. pertussis in patients affected by SARS-COV-2 is rather unlikely. Consequently, we would not recommend for these patients an extensive screening for B. pertussis. 

None.

Immune responses to pertussis vaccines and disease

Severe pertussis infections in the United States

Respiratory viruses and Bordetella pertussis co-infections: a frequent occurrence in children hospitalized with Bordetella pertussis

COVID-BioB Study Group. Characteristics, treatment

Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license

Laboratory diagnosis of pertussis

All authors contributed equally to data collection and manuscript writing.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.