Rotavirus (RV) Vaccine
Rotavirus gets its name from the fact that, under a microscope, the virus resembles a wheel. And you could say, like you might say about a wheel, rotavirus goes round and round. This nasty, potentially lethal bug causes severe acute gastroenteritis with diarrhea and vomiting primarily in infants and young children. Fortunately, there is a safe rotavirus vaccine that can protect your children from this disease.
How Big a Problem Is Rotavirus Infection?
Prior to the introduction of the rotavirus vaccine in February 2006, rotavirus infection was responsible for 200,000 emergency room visits, 55,000 hospitalizations, and 60 to 65 deaths each year in the U.S. Worldwide, it is the leading cause of severe diarrhea among young children, leading to 2 million hospitalizations and more than 500,000 deaths of children aged 5 and under annually. Older children and adults can also be infected with the virus, but the resulting illness is generally milder.
Rotavirus disease is highly contagious. The germ is present in the stool of an infected person and can remain viable for a long time on contaminated surfaces, including people's hands. Children catch it by touching something that's contaminated and then putting their hands in their mouth. The spread of rotavirus infection is a particular problem in hospitals and in day care settings, where it can be easily spread from child to child. It's also easily spread by day care workers, especially when they change diapers without washing their hands afterward.
Symptoms of rotavirus infection, which may last up to eight days, include fever, nausea, abdominal cramps, and frequent, watery diarrhea. If it's severe enough, the diarrhea will cause dehydration, and it's the dehydration that's responsible for the hospitalizations and deaths associated with this disease.
How Effective Is the Rotavirus Vaccine and Is It Safe?
Studies of the rotavirus vaccine have shown that it can prevent about 74% of all rotavirus cases. More importantly, it can prevent approximately 98% of severe cases and 96% of hospitalizations from rotavirus. In one Massachusetts hospital, in two years, the number of cases dropped from 65 to three.
Before it was approved in 2006, the rotavirus vaccine was tested on more than 70,000 children and found to be safe. There was an earlier vaccine, but after being used for two years, it was found to increase the risk of intussusception -- a condition in which the small bowel folds back inside another part of the intestine, causing a bowel obstruction, which could be fatal. The adverse event was rare, affecting one in 10,000 children who received the vaccine, and the product was removed from the market.
The new rotavirus vaccine is a different vaccine. Even so, it was tested specifically for the possibility of intussusception and was found to have no association with an increased risk for the condition.
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