Rotavirus Protects Older Children, Adults Too:CDC Says

Infants who receive the rotavirus vaccine are not the only ones who are protected from the gastrointestinal virus as new research indicates that older children and even adults were less likely to be hospitalized after the vaccine was introduced 7 years ago.

A study published Tuesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that vaccinating infants against rotavirus has also caused a striking decline in serious infections among older children and adults who didn't get vaccinated.

"This is called herd immunity," the CDC's Ben Lopman tells Shots. "By vaccinating young children, we not only prevent them from getting infected, but we also prevent them from transmitting [the virus] to their siblings, their parents and their classmates."

Rotavirus-related discharges also dropped by 70 percent for children aged five to 14, by 53 percent for 15- to 24-year-olds and by 43 percent among adults aged 25 to 44.

Rotavirus causes "severe watery diarrhea, often with vomiting, fever, and abdominal pain," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Before the RotaTeq and Rotarix vaccines came on the market, nearly all U.S. children became infected with rotavirus before their 5th birthday. Worldwide, more than half a million children under age 5 die as a result of rotavirus each year, the CDC says.

Since the vaccine was introduced in 2006, rotavirus hospitalizations have dropped in infants and young children by 80 percent. "About 40,000 hospitalizations per year have been averted by the vaccination program," Lopman says.

The study, which was published in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association, shows that the rotavirus vaccine is indirectly preventing thousands of hospitalizations for diarrhea among older children and adults.

In the post-vaccine era, rotavirus hospitalizations dropped by a whopping 70 percent in kids 5 to 14 years old and by 14 percent in people over 65. The effect in young and middle-aged adults fell between these two extremes.