Speaker
Description
Despite the widespread availability of effective vaccines, pertussis remains a significant public health concern in many high-income countries, particularly because of its severe impact on infants. In recent decades, several regions have experienced a resurgence of pertussis, with recurrent outbreaks and an overall increase in incidence \cite{yeung2017update}. These patterns highlight the need for modelling tools that are both mathematically rigorous and accessible to health practitioners, supporting the exploration of intervention scenarios and evidence-based planning. To this end, we present PerTexP (Pertussis Time Exploration), an interactive MATLAB tool for scenario-based analysis of pertussis transmission under different vaccination strategies \cite{buonomo2025pertexp}. PerTexP is based on a discrete-time, stage-structured compartmental model with two age classes, infants and non-infants, and explicitly incorporates maternal immunisation, infant vaccination, and booster doses in older individuals. Through a graphical user interface, the tool allows users to compare vaccination scenarios and assess their impact on pertussis transmission. Applied to the 2024 Italian pertussis outbreak \cite{poeta2024pertussis}, PerTexP suggests an increasing burden over a five-year horizon and shows that increasing maternal coverage yields a larger reduction in cumulative incidence than an equivalent increase in booster uptake, while elimination requires strengthening both interventions.
Bibliography
@article{buonomo2025pertexp,
author = {Autoriello, Anna and Averga, Sabrina and Buonomo, Bruno and Della Marca, Rossella and Guarino, Alfredo and Moracas, Cristina and Penitente, Emanuela and Poeta, Marco},
title = {PerTexP: scenario-based exploration of pertussis dynamics under maternal and infant vaccination},
elocation-id = {2026.03.05.26347721},
year = {2026},
doi = {10.64898/2026.03.05.26347721},
publisher = {Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press},
URL = {https://www.medrxiv.org/content/early/2026/03/06/2026.03.05.26347721},
eprint = {https://www.medrxiv.org/content/early/2026/03/06/2026.03.05.26347721.full.pdf},
journal = {medRxiv},
}
@article{poeta2024pertussis,
title={Pertussis outbreak in neonates and young infants across Italy, January to May 2024: implications for vaccination strategies},
author={Poeta, Marco and Moracas, Cristina and Albano, Chiara and Petrarca, Laura and Maglione, Marco and Pierri, Luca and Carta, Maurizio and Montaldo, Paolo and Venturini, Elisabetta and De Luca, Maia and others},
journal={Eurosurveillance},
volume={29},
number={23},
pages={2400301},
year={2024}
}
@article{yeung2017update,
title={An update of the global burden of pertussis in children younger than 5 years: a modelling study},
author={Yeung, Karene Hoi Ting and Duclos, Philippe and Nelson, E Anthony S and Hutubessy, Raymond Christiaan W},
journal={The Lancet Infectious Diseases},
volume={17},
number={9},
pages={974--980},
year={2017},
publisher={Elsevier}
}
