Sentinel Hospital Surveillance for Rotavirus Diarrhea in the People’s Republic of China, August 2001–July 2003

Abstract

China has the second largest birth cohort in the world and the second highest number of deaths due to rotavirus infection. It is also the only country with a licensed rotavirus vaccine. Chinese policy makers now need credible estimates of the burden of rotavirus disease, to decide about vaccine use. From August 2001 through July 2003, prospective hospital-based surveillance for rotavirus diarrhea among children <5 years of age was conducted in 6 sentinel hospitals. Rotavirus isolates were characterized to determine the G and P genotypes circulating during the study. Of 3149 children who were admitted to the hospitals for diarrhea and for whom screening for rotavirus was performed, 1590 (50%) had positive results of an antigen detection assay. Of all episodes of rotavirus diarrhea, 95% occurred during the first 2 years of life. The most common rotavirus strain was P[8]G3 (49% of episodes), and all the common strains were detected, including G9 strains (4% of episodes). Ongoing efforts are under way to more precisely define the burden of rotavirus diarrhea in urban and rural populations, to assess the proportion of episodes that may be due to unusual or emerging strains, and to estimate the economic burden of rotavirus disease.

Symptomatic and asymptomatic infections of rotavirus, norovirus, and adenovirus among hospitalized children in Xi'an, China

“…It is interesting that 99.5% of the pediatric diarrhea patients enrolled in this study were under 2 years of age although we aimed for <5 years, consistent with the findings from other studies in China [Qiao et al, 1999;Fang et al, 2005]. High NoV infections under 2 years suggest that children are more susceptible to NoV infection during their early lifetime and subsequently may result in protective immunity against symptomatic NoV infections after 2 years of age [Jing et al, 2000] while maternal antibodies only persist for several months [Parker et al, 1995].…”

Genotypic distribution of rotavirus strains causing severe gastroenteritis in children under 5 years old in Borazjan, Iran

“…Similarly, the predominance of G1 genotype of rotavirus was observed in our study (52.27%), which is in concordance with the results of genotyping from different parts of the world including: Swiss (Lacroix et al, 2010), Taiwan (Mast et al, 2010), France and Cuba (Ribas et al, 2011). Although G2 and G3 are among the most prevalent rotavirus genotypes worldwide (Fang et al, 2005;Dey et al, 2009;Wang et al, 2009;Jere et al, 2011), Kargar et al 2939 nonetheless this strains were not detected in this study. In recent years G4 strain has been detected at relatively high frequency from Germany (Van Damme et al, 2007), Italy (Annarita et al, 2010), South Korea (Shim et al, 2010) and some regions of Iran (Khalili et al, 2004;Eesteghamati et al, 2009;Kargar and Akbarizadeh, 2011).…”

Co-dominance of G1 and emerging G3 rotaviruses in Hong Kong: A three-year surveillance in three major hospitals

“…This is a new variant of G3 which has become prevalent in China since 2000. 8,35 Genotype G9 has become one of the important rotavirus in many countries. In China, the prevalence of genotypes G9 has ranged from 0.4% to 21.2%.…”