Background: Changes to pertussis vaccination programmes can have impacts on disease burden that should be estimated independently from factors such as age- and period-related trends. We used age-period-cohort (APC) models to explore pertussis incidence in Manitoba over a 25-year period (1992-2017).
Methods: We identified all laboratory-confirmed cases of pertussis from Manitoba's Communicable Diseases Database and calculated age-standardized incidence rates. We used APC models to investigate trends in pertussis incidence.
Results: During the study period, 2479 cases were reported. Age-standardized rates were highest during a large outbreak in 1994 (55 cases/100 000 person-years), with much lower peaks in 1998, 2012 and 2016. We saw strong age and cohort effects in the APC models, with a steady decrease in incidence with increasing age and increased risk in the cohort born between 1980 and 1995.
Conclusions: The highest risk for pertussis was consistently in young children, regardless of birth cohort or time period. The 1981 programme change to an adsorbed whole-cell pertussis vaccine with low effectiveness resulted in reduced protection in the 1981-95 birth cohort and contributed to the largest outbreak of disease during the 25-year study period.
Keywords: Bordetella pertussis; age-period-cohort analysis; vaccine; whooping cough.
© The Author(s) 2022; all rights reserved. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association.