A Nation-wide estimation of the cumulative incidence and disease burden of the rotavirus gastroenteritis

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(1)Estimation of annual incidence, age-specific incidence rate, and the cumulative risk of rotavirus gastroenteritis among children in Japan.Rotavirus gastroenteritis is a common childhood infection, but the exact morbidity of the disease is not well described in Japan. We aimed at estimating morbidity measures to determine the magnitude of rotavirus gastroenteritis. An estimate for acute infectious gastroenteritis of all causes, to which rotavirus gastroenteritis belongs, has been available since the enactment in 1999 of the Law concerning the Prevention of Infectious Diseases and Medical Care of Patients with Infectious Diseases. Using this estimate and another estimate for the detection proportion of rotavirus among outpatients with acute infectious gastroenteritis, we calculated the annual incidence, the age-specific annual incidence rate, and the cumulative risk by the age of 6 years for rotavirus gastroenteritis. The latter estimate was obtained by a meta-analysis of four indepen … More dent studies previously performed in Japan. According to our estimates, approximately 800,000 children in Japan under the age of 6 years visit pediatric practices or the outpatient department of hospitals because of rotavirus gastroenteritis at a rate of 11 cases/100 persons/year, and one in two children will visit pediatricians before they go to primary school. Such pediatrician visits most frequently occur at the age of 1 year (27 cases/100 persons/year). Thus, the magnitude of the burden of rotavirus disease among Japanese children is substantial.(2)A high incidence of intussusception in Japan as studied in a sentinel hospital over a 25-year period (1978-2002).The development of second-generation rotavirus vaccines requires knowledge of baseline incidence rates for intussusception in infants prior to vaccine introduction. To obtain such estimates we reviewed clinical records in a hospital that served as the major provider of paediatric beds in a local community in the northern part of Japan. During the 25-year period (1978-2002), there were 91 hospitalizations due to radiologically confirmed intussusception in children <5 years of age, of which 45% were <1 year of age. Assuming that all children with intussusception in the area had been admitted to this hospital, there were an average of 185 and 78 hospitalizations per 100000 person-years for children <1 year old and 5 years old respectively. There was period-to-period variability with no long-term secular trend in the incidence of intussusception. The incidence rate in Japan was among the highest thus far reported, providing further evidence of geographic variability. Less