Human Caliciviruses in Acute Gastroenteritis of Young Children in the Community

Abstract

Episodes of acute gastroenteritis in prospectively followed children between 2 months and 2 years of age were examined for rotaviruses, enteric adenoviruses, astroviruses, and human caliciviruses, including both Norwalk-like viruses (NLVs) and Sapporo-like viruses (SLVs), using PCR and reverse transcription (RT)-PCR assays. A virus was identified in 60% (502/832) of all episodes and in 85% of the moderately severe or severe episodes. Human caliciviruses were as common as rotaviruses, both being detected in 29% of the cases. NLVs accounted for a 20% etiologic share of all cases; the clinical picture was a moderately severe disease with vomiting as a predominant symptom. SLVs were detected in 9% of the cases, the clinical picture being a mild diarrheal disease. Astroviruses were found in 10% and enteric adenoviruses in 6% of the cases. Diagnosis with PCR and RT-PCR methods increases the detection of all gastroenteritis viruses, particularly human caliciviruses. As a group, human caliciviruses are common causative agents of gastroenteritis in children <2 years of age in Finland, and, of these, NLVs cause more severe disease than SLVs.

Epidemiology and clinical features of gastroenteritis in hospitalised children: prospective survey during a 2-year period in a Parisian hospital, France

“…These studies and our results contrast with other sentinel studies conducted by physicians in the general population [5,7,10], in which the incidence of norovirus ranged from 10 to 20%. This is close to and in some cases even higher than the incidence of rotavirus infections [10].…”

“…The literature concerning symptom severity in norovirus and rotavirus gastroenteritis is heterogeneous [42]. A number of previous studies found lower levels of disease severity in norovirus than in rotavirus gastroenteritis, and most of these were carried out in developed countries [7,[43][44][45][46][47]. In contrast, other studies found no significant differences between the severity of rotavirus and norovirus infections [48][49][50][51].…”

“…The sex ratio was 1.26. The mean Vesikari score was 11.7 (standard deviation, 3.16; range, [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. Among the 95 sets of data rejected in this study, 13 were rejected for the lack of clinical data and 82 for the absence of a faecal sample.…”

“…In contrast, the role of Aichi viruses, which belong to the picornavirus family, is not well known [6,7].…”

Porcine enteric caliciviruses: Genetic and antigenic relatedness to human caliciviruses, diagnosis and epidemiology

“…One possibility is that younger pigs are not as susceptible to NoV infection, similar to NoV infections in humans. Noroviruses have been detected in young children between 2 months and 2 years of age [109], but no NoV infections were reported in infants less than 2 months of age. A seroprevalence study of antibodies to Norwalk virus showed that they are acquired gradually in childhood, then more quickly during the adult years and by 50 years of age about 50% of individuals have Norwalk virus antibodies [110].…”