Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2008 Aug;14(8):1224-31.
doi: 10.3201/eid1408.071114.

Systematic literature review of role of noroviruses in sporadic gastroenteritis

Manish M Patel  1 , Marc-Alain Widdowson, Roger I Glass, Kenichiro Akazawa, Jan Vinjé, Umesh D Parashar
Affiliations
Review

Systematic literature review of role of noroviruses in sporadic gastroenteritis

Manish M Patel et al. Emerg Infect Dis. 2008 Aug.

Abstract

We conducted a systematic review of studies that used reverse transcription-PCR to diagnose norovirus (NoV) infections in patients with mild or moderate (outpatient) and severe (hospitalized) diarrhea. NoVs accounted for 12%(95% confidence interval [CI] 10%-15%) of severe gastroenteritis cases among children <5 years of age and 12% (95% CI 9%-15%) of mild and moderate diarrhea cases among persons of all ages. Of 19 studies among children <5 years of age, 7 were in developing countries where pooled prevalence of severe NoV disease (12%) was comparable to that for industrialized countries (12%). We estimate that each year NoVs cause 64,000 episodes of diarrhea requiring hospitalization and 900,000 clinic visits among children in industrialized countries, and up to 200,000 deaths of children <5 years of age in developing countries. Future efforts should focus on developing targeted strategies, possibly even vaccines, for preventing NoV disease and better documenting their impact among children living in developing countries, where >95% of the deaths from diarrhea occur.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Summary of studies assessing proportion of norovirus (NoV)-positive fecal samples among persons with community and outpatient cases of sporadic diarrhea (all ages). *Lau et al. (13), O’Ryan et al. (18), Monica et al. (33), and Sdiri-Loulizi et al. (34) included outpatient and emergency department/hospital patients, but only outpatient data are included in this figure. †Pooled proportion calculated by using the random effects model (DerSimonian and Laird method, StatsDirect Ltd, Cheshire, UK). For studies that included controls, prevalence of NoV among controls was subtracted from prevalence of NoV among case-patients. CI, confidence interval.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Summary of studies assessing proportion of norovirus (NoV)-positive fecal samples among hospitalized and emergency department cases of children <5 years of age who had sporadic diarrhea. *Lau et al. (13), O’Ryan et al. (18), Monica et al. (33), and Sdiri-Loulizi et al. (34) included outpatient and emergency department/hospital patients, but only inpatient data are included in this figure. †Oh et al. (27), 98% (213 of 217) of the case-patients were <5 years of age. ‡Pooled proportion calculated using the random effects model (DerSimonian and Laird method (StatsDirect Ltd, Cheshire, UK). For studies that included controls, prevalence of NoV among controls was subtracted from prevalence of NoV among case-patients. CI, confidence interval.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Bryce J, Boschi-Pinto C, Shibuya K, Black RE; WHO Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group. WHO estimates of the causes of death in children. Lancet. 2005;365:1147–52. 10.1016/S0140-6736(05)71877-8 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Green KY. Caliciviridae: the noroviruses. In: Knipe DM, Howley PM, editors. Fields virology, 5th ed., vol. 1. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2007. p. 949–78.
    1. Lopman B. Noroviruses: simple detection for complex epidemiology. Clin Infect Dis. 2006;42:970–1. 10.1086/500946 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Glass RI, Noel J, Ando T, Fankhauser R, Belliot G, Mounts A, et al. The epidemiology of enteric caliciviruses from humans: a reassessment using new diagnostics. J Infect Dis. 2000;181(Suppl 2):S254–61. 10.1086/315588 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Widdowson MA, Monroe SS, Glass RI. Are noroviruses emerging? Emerg Infect Dis. 2005;11:735–7. - PMC - PubMed

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources