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New Insights Could Help Shield Babies From Diarrhea Bug

THURSDAY, July 16 (HealthDay News) -- The incidence of rotavirus infection, a major cause of infant illness in the United States, could be drastically reduced by a better understanding of when and where infections are likely to spread and by the wide use of new vaccines, new research suggests.

A team including scientists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and elsewhere, noted that rotavirus can cause diarrhea in affected infants and children. The infection is rarely fatal in the United States, but remains a major killer of children in less developed countries.

However, mathematical modeling conducted by the researchers suggests that U.S. rotavirus epidemics are strongly tied to differences in regional birth rates -- for example, incidence is typically higher in the Southwest, where birth rates remain relatively high, compared to the Northeast, where they are relatively low.

According to the researchers, this is important because epidemics are driven by infants who have not previously been infected by the virus. Winter outbreaks of rotavirus could therefore be expected to begin earlier in the Southwest, and only spread later to the Northeast.

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Diane Porter

Diarrhea Guide