CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Pertussis remains an important public health problem especially for children under one year of age. With the main aim at reducing both the burden and the incidence of the disease in the most vulnerable population it was widely accepted to add vaccination boosters beyond the primary series of vaccine doses. Maternal pertussis immunization during the third trimester of every pregnancy was the latest strategy recommended in several countries to improve pertussis control in infants. Epidemiological data related to maternal vaccination safety and the subsequent maternal?fetalantibody transfer are well documented, mostly in countries where the primary vaccination series employ acellular vaccines (aP). However, the introduction of acellular booster during pregnancy did not exclusively occur in aP vaccinated populations, the Argentinian National Immunization Schedule for example, includes a primary series of whole-cell pertussis (wP) vaccines with the incorporation in 2012 of an aP vaccine boosterduring pregnancy. To narrow some gaps in our understanding of maternal pertussisimmunization we previously used the mice model with an immunization protocol consisting in 3 doses of commercial acellular pertussis vaccine (aP), applying the last dose during the pregnancy. Since data in the context of pregnancy booster in a wP primed mother are still insufficient, in this work we ccordingly vaccinated female mice with 2 doses of wP vaccine before pregnancy, and with aP during pregnancy. Then, we measured offspring protection against B. pertussis challenge and specific-antibody levels with or without revaccination using different vaccines. Nonimmunized mice were used as negative control of protection.