A recently study has stated that whooping cough vaccination programs among teens and adults are useless, as the infection is usually spread among children. The study has reached the conclusion after looking into the manner, how social groups affect the spread of disease among people.

The study has appeared in the Thursday publication of Science, which has stated an opposing point of view to conventional belief regarding the spread of whooping cough. Whooping cough is known to be caused by a bacterium known as Bordetella pertussis and is highly transmittable.

Prior to the study, an advisory panel had suggested the inoculation of seniors above the age of 65 with a booster of pertussis to shield children below the age of 1 year old against whooping cough.

Whooping cough is known to prove fatal for 300.000 people across the world, with the number of people being infected around 30-50 million annually. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan and was led by Pejman Rohani.

While, showing an example in the study, researchers showed the case of whooping cough in Sweden, where it was found that the number of cases related to whooping cough were still the same, even though the vaccination programs for adults had been stopped 17-years ago.