St. Louis health officials have noticed an interesting trend in the city; rotavirus infections have spiked every other year, including last year when 65 children fell ill, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch report.
Rotavirus is a gastrointestinal disease that sickened roughly 400,000 and hospitalized 70,000 annually before the widespread introduction of the rotavirus vaccines in 2006. The vaccine is a liquid taken orally two or three times in the baby's first six months.
"We used to hospitalize 150 to 200 kids a year locally from rotavirus," Gregory Storch, MD, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Washington University in St. Louis, told the Post-Dispatch.
After the introduction of the vaccines, the number of children who tested positive for the disease in St. Louis dropped to roughly five a year, before beginning its biannual surge to approximately 60 cases.
In response to the unusual trend, a team at Washington University is planning to conduct a study to find out if the children who developed a rotavirus infection last year received the vaccine, according to the report.
"It doesn't work if you don't give it," Paul Offit, MD, co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine and director of the vaccine education center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, told the Post-Dispatch. "This vaccine is protective against moderate to severe disease. Its strength is to keep you out of the hospital."
Should the Washington University team discover that many of the sickened children received the vaccine, it could indicate the virus mutated or a new strain of the virus has emerged, according to the report.
Dr. Storch told the local paper he expects to have some answers regarding the cause of the rise in rotavirus infection within the next few months.
More articles on rotavirus and vaccines:
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Rotavirus vaccine campaign reduced infection-related hospitalizations, study finds