"Not all children develop substantial symptoms; most of those who do experience a few days of fever, vomiting, and diarrhea, then get better. In the early 1970s, when no rotavirus vaccines were available and most children could expect to be sickened with the virus at least once by the end of toddlerhood, Paul Offit considered it to be no big deal, relatively speaking. In this country especially, rotavirus "was an illness from which children recovered," he told me."
"That perception shifted abruptly during Offit's pediatric residency training, when he saw hundreds of severe rotavirus cases admitted to the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh each year. Although plenty of children weathered the infection largely without bad symptoms, others vomited so profusely that they struggled to keep down the fluids they desperately needed. Offit can still recall the nine-month-old he treated in the late 1970s who was hospitalized after her mother had struggled to feed her sufficient fluids at home."
Rotavirus typically causes a few days of fever, vomiting, and diarrhea, and many children recover without severe problems. Before vaccines, most children contracted rotavirus by toddlerhood, but some experienced profuse vomiting leading to dangerous dehydration, hospitalization, and occasional death. Severe infant dehydration sometimes required emergency measures such as attempted intraosseous hydration. Clinical experience with hundreds of severe pediatric cases motivated development of an oral rotavirus vaccine. RotaTeq, delivered as sugar-sweet drops to infants, was licensed in 2006 and remains one of two main rotavirus vaccines available in the United States, helping prevent severe disease.
Read at The Atlantic
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