Pertussis in Afghanistan, 2007–2008

Pertussis in Afghanistan, 2007–2008

To the Editor: Recent reports have raised concerns about transmission of pertussis among troops stationed in Afghanistan and indicated lack of data about pertussis in this country (1,2). To fi ll the knowledge gap about pertussis in Afghanistan, we analyzed data collected by the new Disease Early Warning System (DEWS) during Afghan Year 1386, which corresponds to March 21, 2007–March 20, 2008 (...

Outbreak of Pertussis, Kabul, Afghanistan

1. Sánchez-Seco MP, Rosario D, Domingo C, Hernández L, Valdés K, Guzmán MG, et al. Generic RT-nested-PCR for detection of fl aviviruses using degenerated primers and internal control followed by sequencing for specifi c identifi cation. J Virol Methods. 2005;126:101–9. DOI: 10.1016/j.jviromet.2005.01.025 2. Prince HE, Lape-Nixon M, Moore RJ, Hogrefe WR. Utility of the Focus Technologies West Ni...

Regulation of pertussis toxin and lipopolysaccharide levels of Bordetella pertussis 134 in response to modulators

  Whooping cough (pertussis) is a highly contagious disease of the human respiratory tract, which is caused by Bordetella pertussis. Reemerge of pertussis in some highly immunized populations and divergency in gene order among several B. pertussis strains promoted this research to study the change of pertussis toxin (PT) and lipopolysacharide levels in response to the different environments. Th...

Afghanistan in Transition

I December 2010, President Obama issued his review of the US strategy in Afghanistan following the significant increase in military forces and a renewed counterinsurgency effort. Nearly a year ago, the US Commander in Chief decided to send an additional 30,000 US forces to Afghanistan as part of a strategy to reverse the Taliban’s momentum and build the Afghan government’s capacity, allowing th...

Promoting Democracy in Afghanistan