[Viruses and gastroenteritis (author's transl)]

Abstract

In recent years it has been demonstrated that a group of viruses, Rotavirus for the children and Norwalk agent for adults, are a highly significant cause of acute gastroenteritis during the months of winter ("winter vomiting disease"). The Rotavirus was identified by Bishop et al. as a double-stranded RNA virus that can be isolate from faeces of children with acute gastroenteritis. Viral gastroenteritis is an autolimitate disease, although under certain conditions it may even lead to severe disease and death by profound dehydration and electrolyte imbalance; it is characterized by nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and others minor symptoms. This entity only affects children between 3 months and 6 years of age, with a little prevalence for the males. Breast-fed babies are commonly thought to be less likely than artificial-fed babies to suffer from infective diarrhea. Rotavirus infection is also known to occur in parents of infected children, but in this situation the symptoms are generally mild or absent and they needn't medical attention. The Rotavirus invade mainly the epithelium of the proximal intestine where they make a cytopatic and physiologic alteration (deficience in Na and K-ATPsa activity) that determines a disturbances of water and electrolyte transport across the epithelium thus contribute to the diarrhea. The best methods for detecting this type of viral gastroenteritis are electron microscopy and, specialy, the complement fixation test. In this moment we have not specific therapy for this new disease but because its epidemiological importance it must be in all clinical minds.