RESEARCH ARTICLE


Changing Epidemiology of Rotavirus-Related Hospitalizations in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, from 2002 to 2006



Vera S Gouvea*, 1, André L.S Domingues1, #, Felipe G Naveca1, Adriana R Pedro1, César C Bevilacqua2
1 Instituto de Microbiologia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2 Instituto de Puericultura e Pediatria Martagão Gesteira, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil


2007 Bentham Science Publishers Ltd.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/), which permits unrestrictive use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


# Present address: Department of Biological Sciences, School of Medicine, Universidade Federal do Triângulo Mineiro, Uberaba, MG, Brazil* Address correspondence to this author at the Departamento de Virologia, Instituto de Microbiologia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Cidade Universitária, CCS, bloco I, Ilha do Fundão, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 21941-590, Brazil; Tel: (55-21) 2562-6750; Fax: (55-21) 2560-8028; E-mail: vera.gouvea@micro.ufrj.br


Abstract

A prospective hospital-based sentinel study conducted in Rio de Janeiro identified a shift in the pattern (long to short electropherotype and P(8) to P(4) genotype) of rotavirus strains recovered from children with severe diarrhea a few months after the far-reaching Brazilian rotavirus immunization program was launched, posing new interesting challenges.

Keywords: Rotavirus diarrhea, hospitalizations, genotypes/electropherotypes, vaccine..