A whooping-cough vaccine you could spray up your nose

Whooping cough is a nasty little killer — about 16 million people catch it every year and more than 150,000 die, many of them babies. The shots we have keep most kids alive, but they don’t stop the bacteria from moving through a classroom or a nursery. Now there’s a vaccine you spray up your nose. In a trial of 366 children and teens in the UK, Australia and Costa Rica, a single spritz of the live-attenuated vaccine BPZE1 trained the nose itself to fight back, triggering the kind of local immune response that could actually block infection and transmission — not just the disease. It was well tolerated, got along fine with the regular booster shot, and the results just landed in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. No needles, no tears: one day, a spritz that could shield the tiniest babies too.