It’s a common sickness among babies especially—rotavirus causes severe diarrheal illness, enough to put children in the hospital.
But now, there’s good news for parents and kids—there are two new experimental vaccines that are proving effective and safe at preventing the illness.
This is a very interesting story of huge hopes dashed and now reignited.
A rotavirus vaccine that hit the market in 1999 was soon shown to cause a serious but rare complication called intussusception--a problem with the intestines. The vaccine was taken off the market, which was very disappointing to the health profession, and a problem in that now deaths and serious illnesses from rotavirus
When it comes to pediatric visits to the doctor, the gastrointestinal virus called rotavirus is way up there as a cause. Dr. John Larson, a pediatrician at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, says, “The single most thing we see is respiratory illness but after respiratory illness diarrhea would be number two in terms of sick visits. In the months of January to March a significant amount is rotavirus maybe 50 percent or more.”
Rotavirus is a huge health issue worldwide. It kills a half million children in developing countries annually.
Even in America, among children under five years of age, rotavirus is responsible for up to 70,000 hospitalizations, and an estimated 250,000 e-r visits, on top of more than 400,000 visits to primary care offices annually.
“They really are quite sick it’s a miserable disease. They vomit severely and then they get the bad diarrhea so it starts on one end and goes to the other,” says Dr. Larson.
And it often lasts a week, or longer. “There’s no specific medicine to kill the rotavirus or make the diarrhea better,” Dr. Larson states.
And since the withdrawal of the first rotavirus vaccine called Rotashield back in 1999, because of concerns it caused the intestinal complication called intussusception, there’s no way to prevent it en masse.
But now, there are not one, but two new oral vaccines in the final phases of study.
The latest data in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine shows Rotarix from GlaxoSmithKline and Rotateq from Merck are highly effective at preventing rotavirus infections; and they didn’t increase the risk of any serious complications at all, including intussusception.
“Rotateq reduced the rate of hospitalizations by 96 percent and the rate of emergency visits for rotavirus by 94 percent,” says Dr. Penny Heaton of Merck.
And because the kids aren’t getting sick, neither are the parents. In fact the rotateq vaccine reduced the number of lost work days in adults by 87 percent.
“After the experience with intussusception, with Rotashield I thought it would be a long time before anyone would want to test the waters with a rotavirus vaccine. So I’m really delighted to see both of these vaccines and further delighted to see they don’t seem to be causing intussusception,” says Dr. Larson.
Parents will be delighted if the vaccines get approved for use in America by the FDA.
These two immunizations are basically equally effective; they’re both given by mouth, a month apart, at the same time that the DPT or diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus vaccine is given. However one vaccine requires three doses and another requires only two.