Glossary of Medical and Health Terms

Rotavirus

Rotavirus, the leading cause of severe diarrhoea among infants and young children, is a genus of double-stranded RNA virus in the family Reoviridae. By the age of five, nearly every child in the world has been infected with rotavirus at least once. However, with each infection, immunity develops and subsequent infections are less severe. There are seven species of this virus, referred to as A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Rotavirus A, the most common, causes more than 90% of infections in humans.

Rotavirus is transmitted by the faecal-oral route, it infects cells that line the small intestine, and produces an enterotoxin. This toxin induces gastroenteritis, leading to severe diarrhoea that may cause death through dehydration. Although rotavirus was discovered in 1973, and accounts for up to 50% of infants and children hospitalised with severe diarrhoea, the importance of rotavirus is still not widely known within the public health community: particularly in developing countries. Rotavirus also infects animals and is an important pathogen of livestock.

In developing countries, rotavirus infections cause about 611,000 deaths each year in children under five years of age, and almost two million bouts of severe illness. In the United States each year rotavirus causes about 2.7 million cases of severe gastroenteritis in children, almost 60,000 hospitalisations, and around 37 deaths. Public health campaigns to combat rotavirus focus on providing oral rehydration therapy and vaccination.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotavirus

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