While the infection caused by rotavirus is almost always mild and in children under 5 years in the most severe cases occur with a combination of constant vomiting and severe diarrhea leading to dehydration.

In the West, better nutrition and intravenous rehydration usually save the boys of this disease. Only in the United States, the virus causes the hospitalization of 55,000 children per year, of which about 20 die annually. Another reality is that in India, where 100 000 children die each year.

Dr. Paul Offit, chief of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (United States ) and one of the developers of the Merck vaccine, said rotavirus symptoms are among the most common causes of hospital admission for winter.

Off it described the case of a young patient who had contracted the virus and fell into a state of semi – consciousness the next day while his mother was stuck in a traffic jam trying to get to hospital. The veins of the child, said the specialist, were so jammed that the surgeon had to have it channeled in the vein of the neck. “In Botswana, that child would have died, “he said.

Extreme care

In 1999, Wyeth withdrew from the U.S. market its vaccine against rotavirus ( Rotashield ) after it accused the company because of patients who had suffered inexplicably intussusception, i.e. the fold of a part of the intestine within another. This results in desperate pain, persistent vomiting and black stools.

A study by the National Institutes of Health in the United States concluded that the vaccine may not have been responsible for the intussusception, as it can be spontaneous and for unknown reasons. However, the final statistics showed that had affected one in 10,000 children.

Now, vaccines from GlaxoSmithKline ( Rotarix ) and Merck, Sharp & Dohme ( RotaTeq ) resulted in few cases of intussusception and no difference between children who had received the vaccine and those who received placebo. Both are oral administration and its composition includes weakened live virus, such as vaccination against polio.

While Glaxo tested its vaccine in children from poor families and average income in Latin America, the Merck study was conducted in rich countries like the United States and Finland, and in countries like Jamaica and Mexico. The first vaccine prevented 85% of severe cases of rotavirus and Merck, 98 percent. In its pilot phase, both vaccines were able to reduce hospitalization for diarrhea.

Dr. Roger I. Glass specialist vaccines the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta ( United States) said that the emergence of these two vaccines is “an amazing fact. Everyone is concerned about the severe acute respiratory syndrome ( SARS) or Ebola, but these diseases did not kill half a million people in a decade and rotavirus kills a million kids per year. “

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