Vaccine Against Rotavirus Lowers Hospitalizations and Emergency Visits

Abstract

A vaccine against rotavirus, the leading cause of diarrhea in infants, has led to a dramatic drop in hospitalizations and emergency department visits since it came on the market 2 years ago, doctors reported in October at the 8th Annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC), 46th Annual Meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America in Washington, DC. The vaccine also seems to prevent illness in unvaccinated children by reducing the number of infections that can be spread in the community. Before the availability of the vaccine, >200,000 children in the United States were taken to emergency departments each year and >55,000 were hospitalized each year with rotavirus, which causes vomiting and diarrhea, primarily from January through May. Worldwide, the virus kills 1,600 young children each day. Since Merck & Co.'s Rotateq was first marketed in 2006, hospital visits and stays due to the virus have dropped 80%–100%, as shown in studies by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and several other groups. Last winter, rotavirus cases were much less extensive than in previous years, CDC scientists report. Hospitals in a network that tracks cases for the CDC saw more than an 80% drop in admissions owing to rotavirus, according to 1 study. Another study, by Merck, reported a 100% drop in hospitalizations and emergency department visits during the 2007 and 2008 rotavirus seasons compared with previous seasons. The study was based on a review of health insurance claims for approximately 61,000 infants and diagnoses made by doctors in clinical practice. Rotateq is an oral vaccine given at 2, 4, and 6 months of age. In June, a second rotavirus vaccine came on the market, GlaxoSmithKline's Rotarix. It requires only 2 doses, which are completed by 4 months of age. For more details, see http://www.icaacidsa2008.org/.