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Rotavirus Symptoms and Treatment

Rotavirus is the common name for a family of viruses that share several features (Reoviridae). The group A rotaviruses are the most common cause of severe diarrhea in children, striking 130 million people a year. It causes a diarrhea so severe that 870,000 children die from this virus around the world every year. While few U.S. children die, the disease still sends 50,000 of them to the hospital every year.

If an infant or toddler develops diarrhea in the winter, there is a good chance that a rotavirus is the culprit. By age four, most people have been infected and developed antibodies to the virus. While the disease is not particularly deadly in the United States among children with healthy immune systems, rotavirus in the developing world is often fatal because the children are already malnourished when they become infected. In the United States, the chance a child will be hospitalized with rotavirus is one in 40, and one in every 800 hospitalized children will die. The rotavirus season begins in late fall and ends in the spring.