Whooping Cough

Treatment with the antibiotic erythromycin is helpful only at very early stages of whooping cough: during incubation and early in the catarrhal stage. After the cilia, and the cells bearing those cilia, are damaged, the process cannot be reversed. Such a patient will experience the full progression of whooping cough symptoms, which will only abate when the old, damaged lining cells of the respiratory tract are replaced over time with new, healthy, cilia-bearing cells. However, treatment with erythromycin is still recommended to decrease the likelihood of B. pertussis spreading. In fact, all members of the household in which a patient with whooping cough lives should be treated with erythromycin to prevent spread of B. pertussis throughout the community.

Other treatment is supportive, and includes careful monitoring of fluids, rest in a quiet, dark room to decrease paroxysms, and suctioning of mucus.