DIAGNOSTIC-CRITERIA AND CASE DEFINITIONS FOR PERTUSSIS

Pertussis diagnosis remains difficult to achieve because of the extrem e variability of the clinical expression of the infection and because of the absence of validated sensitive and specific biological method o f confirmation. Sensitivity and specificity requirements are different as may be in clinical practice, epidemiological surveillance or vacci ne trials. For this reason, various case definitions are used without any consensus. New technologies demonstrating both sensitivity and spe cificity such as PCR may improve diagnosis in the future, simplify the case definitions and hopefully will reach a consensus.