Vaccine Leads to Drop in Severe Diarrhea

Hospital stays for diarrhea dropped after a rotavirus vaccine was introduced, new research finds. This virus is the biggest cause of winter diarrhea in early childhood. A vaccine against the disease was approved in 2006. Children get the vaccine when they are babies. They get 2 or 3 doses. Researchers looked at diarrhea cases for 62 U.S. hospitals. They focused on those that involved a hospital stay for a child under age 5. These cases dropped by half in the 2007-2008 season. That was the first year after the vaccine became available. Cases went back up the next year. But they remained 29% lower than pre-vaccine levels. The journal Pediatrics published the study online December 20.

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