Rotavirus serology and excretion in hospitalized non-diarrhoeal patients

Despite the well-recognized association between rotavirus (RV) and infantile diarrhoeal disease, a few studies have shown that the isolation rate of RV from the faeces of non-diarrhoeal patients can be high, suggesting that the finding of RV in the stools of individual gastro-enteritis (GE) patients need not necessarily denote an aetiological relationship. A prospective study of rotavirus serology and stool excretion was carried out in a group of non-diarrhoeal paediatric patients. A positive ELISA for RV antigen was found in 13.3% children, which compared favourably with an asymptomatic RV-excretion rate of 16.2% found in normal subjects in the community, but differed significantly from the 54.6% RV-excretion rate found in hospitalized GE patients. This confirms that RV is an important enteropathogen. Furthermore, approximately half of the non-diarrhoeal infants acquired nosocomial RV infections in hospital, most of these being asymptomatic. One-sixth of asymptomatic RV excretors showed evidence of prior exposure to rotavirus.