Diagnosis of Whooping Cough—A Comparison of Culture, Immunofluorescence and Serology with ELISA

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Abstract
Three methods for diagnosis of whooping cough—culture, immunofluorescence (IF) technique on nasopharyngeal secretion and serology with ELISA—were compared. 52 patients with symptoms of upper respiratory tract infection, which could not exclude pertussis as a differential diagnosis, were investigated. Pertussis infection was confirmed in 30 patients. Of these 16 (53%) were found by culture, 19 (63%) by IF and 28 (93%) by serology. It is concluded that IF analysis of nasopharyngeal secretion is a valuable tool for rapid diagnosis of whooping cough with a sensitivity similar to that of culture. Serodiagnosis with ELISA added a significant number of positive patients in which culture and IF were negative.