The clinical manifestation and pathogenesis of enteritis associated with rotavirus and enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli infections in domestic animals.

Rotavirus and enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) are enteropathogens each capable of inducing diarrhoea in some animal species and man. Unstressed young animals develop an age-related resistance to infection with either rotavirus or ETEC which differs for each animal species. The effects of experimental infection of calves, lambs, foals and piglets with rotavirus and ETEC given either alone or in combination, have been examined. In general, dual infections tended to lengthen the period of age susceptibility and increase the severity of gastroenteritis, compared to infection with either agent alone. ETEC caused little or no pathological changes in the small intestine while rotavirus induced moderate inflammatory, morphological and physiological changes including reduced activity of membrane-bound digestive enzymes. In dual infections, mucosal lesions were more severe than those seen after rotavirus infection and ETEC proliferation in the lumen of the small intestine was greater than in animals infected with ETEC alone. Two distinct mechanisms of diarrhoea, presumably, were involved; net fluid hypersecretion into the lumen of the gut mediated by ETEC enterotoxin(s), and brush border maldigestion and malabsorption which was caused by rotavirus infection of the small intestine.