Global, regional and national burden of pertussis in 1990–2023: a Global Burden of Disease study
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Despite long-standing immunization programs, pertussis remains a major cause of vaccine-preventable mortality, particularly among infants. Here we present a primary assessment of global pertussis incidence, mortality and disability-adjusted life years across 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2023. We show that despite short-term pandemic-period fluctuations, the dominant global pattern from 1990 to 2023 was long-term decline: age-standardized mortality decreased by 61.2% and age-standardized incidence by 41.6%. Relative to the anomalously low pandemic-period estimates, incidence and mortality rebounded by 102.6% (95% uncertainty interval, 77.0–128.2%) and 66.1% (95% uncertainty interval, 2.4–174.5%), respectively, between 2020 and 2023. In 2023 alone, we estimated 18.9 million cases and 115,000 deaths attributable to pertussis. This burden remains profoundly inequitable and inversely correlated with the sociodemographic index; sub-Saharan Africa now accounts for roughly 65% of global deaths, with the highest population-adjusted risk concentrated among infants younger than 6 months. Our findings highlight a modeled geographic concentration of pertussis mortality and support strengthening timely infant vaccination, maternal immunization where recommended and feasible and robust surveillance in highly susceptible regions. Updates to the Global Burden of Disease study showed that while global trends in pertussis (whooping cough) declined from 1990 to 2023, the rebound in incidence and mortality since 2020, particularly in high-income regions, reflects stalled vaccination progress worldwide.
Source: Nature Medicine
Authors: GBD 2023 Pertussis Collaborators, Qiao Liu, Sijia Wang, Noga Shalev, Ashley A. Harris, Stephanie A. Price, Tuhina Srivastava, Ishu Poudyal, Benn Sartorius, Hasan Aalruz, Sherief Abd-Elsalam, Habtamu Abebe Getahun, Armita Abedi, Olifan Zewdie Abil, Richard Gyan Aboagye, Amr Selim Abu Lila, Aishah Fadila Adamu, Muhammad Sohail Afzal, Saira Afzal, Sajjad Ahmad, Suleiman Idris Ahmad, Tauseef Ahmad, Ayman Ahmed, Jahanzaib Mian Ahmed, Kenni Wojujutari Ajele, Oluwasefunmi Akeju, Akil Akhtar, Karolina Akinosoglou, Damilare Michael Akintunde, Hammad Akram, Tariq Al Zoubi, Yazan Al-Ajlouni, Muath A. Alammar, Mohammad T. AlBataineh, Ali M. Alfalki, Mohammad Daud Ali, Shahid Ali, Montaha Al-Iede, Hamid Alinejad Rokny, Morteza Alipour, Hazim Alkousheh, Sabah Al-Marwani, Joseph Uy Almazan, Ahmad Rajeh Al-Qudimat, Najim Z. Alshahrani, Ali Salman Al-Shami, Awais Altaf, Jaffar A. Al-Tawfiq, Nelson Alvis-Guzman, Hany Aly, Raed M. Al-Zoubi, Isha Amatya, Saeed Amini, Bibin Gnanadhason Anand, Abhishek Anil, Aisha Ansari, Saeid Anvari, Razique Anwer, Jalal Arabloo, Mosab Arafat, Demelash Areda, Muhammad Shahzad Aslam, Seyyed Shamsadin Athari, Lemessa Assefa A. Ayana, Habtamu Molla Ayele, Damilola Jeremiah Ayowole, Maciej Banach, Hiba Jawdat Barqawi, Mohammad-Mahdi Bastan, Narasimha M. Beeraka, Payam Behzadi, Desalegn Weldebrhan Bekru, Alemu Gedefie Belete, Pankaj Bhardwaj, Priyadarshini Bhattacharjee, Trupti Bodhare, Colin Stewart Brown, Jefferson Antonio Antonio Buendia Buendia, Yasser Bustanji, Zahid A. Butt, Felix Carvalho, Rama Mohan Chandika, Vijay Kumar Chattu, Anis Ahmad Chaudhary, Akhilanand Chaurasia, Haiyan Chen, Patrick R. Ching, Devasahayam J. Christopher, Dinh-Toi Chu, Haley Marie Cionfolo, Omid Dadras, Xiaochen Dai, Lalit Dandona, Rakhi Dandona, Samuel Demissie Darcho, Nihar Ranjan Dash, Fernando Pio De la Hoz, Rodrigo DeAntonio, Sindhura Deekonda, Anteneh Assefa Desalegn, Vinoth Gnana Chellaiyan Devanbu, Devananda Devegowda, Premnath Dhanaraj, Giuseppe Di Martino, Marcello Di Pumpo, Sadia Din, Ojas Prakashbhai Doshi, Robert Kokou Dowou, Oyewole Christopher Durojaiye, Siddhartha Dutta, Ferry Efendi, El-Sayed Hemdan Eissa, Muhammed Elhadi, Chadi Eltaha, Abdelgawad Salah Eltahawy, Reham Mokhtar ELTarabili, Majid Eslami, Aisha Farhana, Alireza Feizkhah, Getahun Fetensa, Tommaso Filippini, Claudio Fiorilla, Florian Fischer, Celia Fortuna Rodrigues, Márió Gajdács, Rupesh K. Gautam, Nsikakabasi Samuel George, Manal Hadi Ghaffoori Kanaan, Ramy Mohamed Ghazy, Syed Abdullah Gilani, Gamze Gökulu, Mahaveer Golechha, Davide Golinelli, Sapna Gupta, Ramtin Hajibeygi, Raz Mohammed Hama Salih, Samer Hamidi, Zitta Barrella Harboe, Arief Hargono, Sara Harsini, Mehdi Hoseinzadeh, Md Sabbir Hossain, Segun Emmanuel Ibitoye, Adalia Ikiroma, Olayinka Stephen Ilesanmi, Irena M. Ilic, Milena D. Ilic, Mustafa Alhaji Isa, Mihajlo Jakovljevic, Reza Jalilzadeh Yengejeh, Esmaeil Jarrahi, Gwang Hun Jeong, Nabi Jomehzadeh, Nitin Joseph, Dler Hussein Kadir, Oleksandr Kamyshnyi, Kehinde Kazeem Kanmodi, S. Suthanthira Kannan, Tomasz M. Karpiński, Awoke Amare Kebede, Himanshu Khajuria, Mehdi Khezeli, Pavan Khosla, Fireza Husnul Khotimah, Azhin Mohammed Khudhur, Grace Kim, Min Seo Kim, Shivakumar KM Kondlahalli, Farzad Kompani, Kewal Krishan, Claudia E. Kuehni, Mukhtar Kulimbet, Dewesh Kumar, G. Anil Kumar, Kamal Kumar, Pradeep Kumar, Ville Kytö, Yemane Leake, Hoi Leong Lee, Hwamin Lee, Sergey Vadimovich Lee, Seung Won Lee, Si Li, José Francisco López-Gil, Peng Luo, Ellina Lytvyak, Nozad Hussein Mahmood, Shima Mahmoudi, Ghaseb Naser Makhadmeh, Tabarak Malik, Aseer Manilal, Hossein Masoumi-Asl, Fernanda Penido Matozinhos, Michelangelo Mercogliano, Rahwa Adisu Mesfin, Tomislav Mestrovic, Nouh Saad Mohamed, Mohammad Reza Mohammadi, Mokhtar Mohammadi, Hassen Mohammed, Yahaya Mohammed, Ali H. Mokdad, Lorenzo Monasta, Rohith Motappa, Sumaira Mubarik, Scherko Hama Law Murad, Christopher J. L. Murray, Sani Musa, Ghulam Mustafa, Zuhair S. Natto, Biswa Prakash Nayak, Javad Nazari, Cuong Tat Nguyen, Duy Cao Nguyen, Trang Nguyen, Afewerki Tesfahunegn Nigusse, Tewodros Mulugeta Nigussie, Vikram Niranjan, Ali Aahil Noorali, Chisom Adaobi Nri-Ezedi, Fred Nugen, Akinyemi O. D. Ofakunrin, Anthony Jide Ogunbadewa, Osaretin Christabel Okonji, Vivian N. Onaemo, Aksoltan Shyhdurdyevna Oradova, Verner N. Orish, Amel Ouyahia, P. A. Mahesh, Chulwoo Park, Satyananda Patel, Mohamed Anas Patni, Iuliia Pavlova, Jarmila Pekarcikova, Flavia Pennisi, Gladymar Perez Chacon, Dimitri Poddighe, Roman V. Polibin, Michal Pruc, Xiang Qi, Yashpal Singh Raghav, Fakher Rahim, Mosiur Rahman, Hakim Rahmoune, Mahmoud Mohammed Ramadan, Shakthi Kumaran Ramasamy, Nemanja Rancic, Ashkan Rasouli-Saravani, Salman Rawaf, Karthik Rayapureddi, Elrashdy M. Redwan, Ateeq Rehman, Bhagwan Narayan Rekadwad, Luis Felipe Reyes, Nazila Rezaei, Omid Rezahosseini, Tércia Moreira Ribeiro da Silva, Luca Ronfani, Allen Guy Patrick Ross, Salvatore Rubino, Khaled Saad, Cameron John Sabet, Muhammad Nabeel Saddique, Umar Saeed, Mehdi Safari, Ali Safdari, Amene Saghazadeh, Indranil Saha, Fatemeh Saheb Sharif-Askari, Amirhossein Sahebkar, Durgesh Prasad Sahoo, Nasir Salam, Afeez Abolarinwa Salami, Mohd Saleem, Mohamed A. Saleh, Aswini Saravanan, Murtaja Satea, Chandrabose Selvaraj, Muhammad Ashir Shafique, Sajid Ali Shah, Syed Ali Raza Shah, Syed Monowar Alam Shahid, Endrit Shahini, Sunder Sham, Mohammed Shannawaz, Bereket Beyene Shashamo, Samendra P. Sherchan, Shirindokht Shirazi, Aminu Shittu, Seyed Afshin Shorofi, Jasvinder A. Singh, Shilpy Singh, Surjit Singh, Abhijeet Prasad Sinha, Robert Sinto, Vipul Srivastava, Chandan Kumar Swain, Seyyed Mohammad Tabatabaei, Zanan Mohammed-Ameen Taha, Jabeen Taiba, Mengistie Kassahun Tariku, Mohamad-Hani Temsah, Sagar Tiwari, Madi Tleshev, Giacomo Pietro Vigezzi, Tuan Vinh, Linh Vu, Agnes Wamuyu Wamai, Shimels Getaneh Weldemedhn, Nuwan Darshana Wickramasinghe, Phoebe Catherine May Williams, Sajad Yaghoubi, Galal Yahya, Natsuhiko Yamada, Dong Keon Yon, Mubashir Zafar, Fathiah Zakham, Heather J. Zar, Seema Zargar, Mohammed G. M. Zeariya, Haijun Zhang, Xiyu Zhang, Zhi-Jiang Zhang, Simon I. Hay, Jonathan F. Mosser, Jue Liu, Jonathan F. Mosser, Jue Liu
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Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Microbiology
Field: Immunology and Microbiology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $12,690
Award: G5435014295
OpenAlex ID: W7223111998