In the “old days,” meaning before 2006, it was not unusual for us to have several infants with Rotavirus admitted to the hospital at the same time at this time of year. Rotavirus was part of the reason that our pediatric ward was often full in the winter, sometimes causing our patients to overflow onto the adjacent adult ward. We dealt with Rotavirus so often that the nurses on the pediatric ward could usually predict a positive test for it before we had the results based on the smell of the stool. In contrast, that same pediatric ward now rarely houses more than a couple of patients at a time, though the decrease is certainly not due only to fewer cases of Rotavirus.
The difference is that we now have an oral vaccine for
Rotavirus that is given at two, four, and six months of age. Just two years
after introduction of this vaccine, there was an 85% reduction in ER visits and
hospitalizations due to Rotavirus nationwide.
Prior to the currently available vaccines, there was another
Rotavirus vaccine on the market. It was quickly discovered that there was a
small increase in cases of intussusception, a type of intestinal obstruction,
in children who had received the vaccine and it was quickly withdrawn from the
market.The currently available vaccines have been watched closely for this same association and no increased risk of intussusception has been found. The successful reduction of Rotavirus infections is evidence for the efficacy of the vaccine as well as the mechanisms in place for detecting adverse reactions to immunizations.
