Community-level burden of acute diarrhoeal illness in the first 2 years of life in Brisbane, Australia: A birth cohort study.

Abstract

This study sought to describe the burden of acute diarrhoeal illness (ADI) in an Australian subtropical urban setting following rotavirus vaccine introduction and to investigate the associations between child/family characteristics and ADI. Parents of 154 children from the Observational Research in Childhood Infectious Diseases birth cohort provided daily symptom and health-care data until the age of 2 years. The incidence rate of ADI was 1.07 per child-year (95% confidence interval: 0.94-1.21). The median length of episode duration was 3 days (25th-75th percentiles: 1-6). The incidence rate was significantly higher in the first month of life and between 6 and 17 months of age compared with 18-23 months, also for children with siblings and in formal childcare. Overall, 49% of ADI episodes led to health-care visits. Despite a successful rotavirus vaccine programme, ADI still results in a substantial disease burden affecting young Australian children and their families.