A Review on 'Diagnosis, Management & Prevention of Rotavirus Infections'

Background: Rotavirus is distributed worldwide & is one of the most important causes of diarrhea (gastroenteritis) in infants and children less than five years. Rotavirus constitutes 25 million clinical visits & each year more than 450.000 children under the age of 5 years die because of this infection. Rotavirus is a preventable infection, even though, most deaths from this infection occur in developing countries. According to the report released in 2017 by WHO, each year more than 215000 children die from this infection which constitutes 3.4% of all death among children. Objectives: Diagnosis, Management & Prevention of Rotavirus infections. Research questions: 1) What are the best diagnostic techniques for Rotavirus? 2) What are the best treatment & preventive measures for Rotavirus infection? Method and materials: The inclusion criteria for the research was any publication in English on Rotavirus gastroenteritis. The keyword "rotavirus" was used to search in the National Library of Medicine's PubMed, Scopus, Research gate &NCBI databases. We also included publications in local medical journals and in local languages for which abstracts in English were available. We further reviewed the cross-referenced articles from the retrieved ones. A total of 112 published articles were identified. Articles published before 2009& articles cover the structure & genetic epidemiology were excluded. Results: The diagnosis of Rotavirus in the stool specimens are confirmed by either ELISA or Immune-chromatography. The determination of genotypes and genetic epidemiology is done using RT-PCR. The best management of Rotavirus infection is based on the treatment of dehydration. There are two live attenuated RV vaccines for the prevention of rotavirus: Rotarix? and RotaTeq?. These vaccines are administered orally at the age of 2, 4 & 6 months of age respectively.