Antibiotics for whooping cough (pertussis).

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Whooping cough is a highly contagious disease. Infants are the population at highest risk of severe disease and death. Erythromycin for 14 days is recommended for treatment and contact prophylaxis but this regime is considered inconvenient and prolonged. The value of contact prophylaxis is uncertain. OBJECTIVES: To study the benefits and risks of antibiotic treatment of and contact prophylaxis against whooping cough. SEARCH STRATEGY: The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library Issue 1, 2004); MEDLINE (January 1966 to February 2004); EMBASE (January 1974 to August 2003); conference abstracts and reference lists of articles were searched. Stud..