Symptomatic and asymptomatic rotavirus infections in hospitalized children.

During one year, 871 infants and children admitted to a Dutch paediatric ward were examined weekly for rotavirus. Rotavirus was detected in the stools of 64/129 (49.6%) children with diarrhoea and in 283/742 (38.1%) controls. The incidence of asymptomatic rotavirus excretors increased from 14.5% in infants 0 to 6 months of age to 65.8% in children of 6 years and over, a feature not yet reported. Possible explanations may be the methodology used, the age groups studied, the local hospital (and community) situation and the geographical location. Routine bacteriology revealed enteropathogens in 25.6% of the children with diarrhoea: Salmonellae in 20.9%, Campylobacter jejuni in 3.9%, Yersinia enterocolitica in 1.5%, Shigella sonnei in 0.8% and enteropathogenic E. coli in 0.8% of the patients.