Whooping cough | EPFL Graph Search

Whooping cough, also known as pertussis or the 100-day cough, is a highly contagious, vaccine-preventable bacterial disease. Initial symptoms are usually similar to those of the common cold with a runny nose, fever, and mild cough, but these are followed by two or three months of severe coughing fits. Following a fit of coughing, a high-pitched whoop sound or gasp may occur as the person breathes in. The violent coughing may last for 10 or more weeks, hence the phrase "100-day cough". A person may cough so hard that they vomit, break ribs, or become very tired from the effort. Children less than one year old may have little or no cough and instead have periods where they cannot breathe. The time between infection and the onset of symptoms is usually seven to ten days. Disease may occur in those who have been vaccinated, but symptoms are typically milder. Pertussis is caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis. It is spread easily through the coughs and sneezes of an infected person. People are infectious from the start of symptoms until about three weeks into the coughing fits. Those treated with antibiotics are no longer infectious after five days. Diagnosis is by collecting a sample from the back of the nose and throat. This sample can then be tested either by culture or by polymerase chain reaction. Prevention is mainly by vaccination with the pertussis vaccine. Initial immunization is recommended between six and eight weeks of age, with four doses to be given in the first two years of life. Protection from pertussis decreases over time, so additional doses of vaccine are often recommended for older children and adults. Vaccination during pregnancy is highly effective at protecting the infant from pertussis during their vulnerable early months of life, and is recommended in many countries. Antibiotics may be used to prevent the disease in those who have been exposed and are at risk of severe disease. In those with the disease, antibiotics are useful if started within three weeks of the initial symptoms, but otherwise have little effect in most people.

How to Count Coughs: An Event-Based Framework for Evaluating Automatic Cough Detection Algorithm Performance

David Atienza Alonso, Tomas Teijeiro Campo, Lara Orlandic, Jonathan Dan, Jérôme Paul Rémy Thevenot

Chronic cough disorders are widespread and challenging to assess because they rely on subjective patient questionnaires about cough frequency. Wearable devices running Machine Learning (ML) algorithms are promising for quantifying daily coughs, providing c ...

arXiv2024

Capsular Polysaccharide Restrains Type VI Secretion in Acinetobacter baumannii

Melanie Blokesch, Loriane Bader, Mary-Claude Croisier-Coeytaux, Nicolas Olmo Flaugnatti

The type VI secretion system (T6SS) is a sophisticated, contact-dependent nanomachine involved in interbacterial competition. To function effectively, the T6SS must penetrate the membranes of both attacker and target bacteria. Structures associated with th ...

2024

A Multimodal Dataset for Automatic Edge-AI Cough Detection

David Atienza Alonso, Tomas Teijeiro Campo, Lara Orlandic, Jérôme Paul Rémy Thevenot

Counting the number of times a patient coughs per day is an essential biomarker in determining treatment efficacy for novel antitussive therapies and personalizing patient care. There is a need for wearable devices that employ multimodal sensors to perform ...

Zenodo2023