Rotavirus diarrhea. Disease burden in a pediatric hospital of Buenos Aires.

Anticipating the use of the rotavirus vaccine, we performed this study in o rder to estimate the rotavirus disease burden in a pediatric hospital. We s tudied 648 children < 3 years of age between September/97 and August/98, as sisted at the Outpatient Diarrhea Unit, or hospitalized due to acute diarrh ea in our Hospital. We found rotavirus associated to 36% of the diarrhea ca ses studied in the Outpatient Clinics, and in 45% of the hospitalized child ren. We estimate the assistance of 1674 rotavirus diarrheas per year in the Outpatient Clinics, but only 14 of them required hospitalization. The stud y describes a peak of rotavirus diarrheas between March and June, and anoth er peak of rotavirus-negative diarrheas between January and March (probably due to bacterial diarrheas). Rotavirus disease presented a higher frequenc y between 6 to 23 months of age: only 10% of the 233 rotavirus cases occurr ed in children older than 24 months and 13% in infants less than 6 months o f age. The situation described is significant because the recently licensed rotavirus vaccine is being used in 3 doses at 2, 4 and 6 months and could have prevented most of the rotavirus cases observed during this study.