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Rotavirus vaccine in children may offer household protection
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Adults in households with children who had received rotavirus vaccine demonstrated lower rates of gastroenteritis-related hospitalizations, new data suggest.
“Outpatient gastroenteritis encounters were modestly increased in some age categories,” CDC researchers wrote in TheJournal of Infectious Diseases. “One explanation could be that rotavirus illness occurred in some vaccinated households but was less severe because of lower overall shedding of wild-type rotavirus passed from a previously vaccinated infant (compared to an unvaccinated infant), so that care is more frequently received as an outpatient only and less frequently at a higher level.”
The researchers used data from the Truven Health MarketScan claims database from 2008 to 2011 to evaluate gastroenteritis rates from January to June and compare the rates in households in which the child received the vaccine with the rates in households with unvaccinated children. Adults with gastroenteritis medical encounters were identified with ICD-9 codes.
The study included 90,000 households with 240,000 individuals. The households were divided into three groups. The first (group 1) included children born from April 2006 to July 2007 with continuous household insurance coverage from January to June 2008 and 2009. The second cohort (group 2) was born from August 2007 to July 2008 with insurance coverage from January to June 2009 and 2010. The last cohort (group 3) was born from August 2008 to July 2009, with insurance coverage from January to June 2010 and 2011.
There were significantly lower rates of gastroenteritis-related hospital admissions for adults aged 20 to 29 years and females aged 20 to 29 years in vaccinated households in group 1, as well as males aged 30 to 39 years in vaccinated households in group 2. Gastroenteritis-related ED encounters were also lower for vaccinated households among females aged 20 to 29 years in group 2 and individuals aged 5 to 19 years in group 3.
The outpatient gastroenteritis encounters were significantly higher in the vaccinated households, particularly among individuals aged 5 to 19 years in group 1 and some adults younger than 50 years in each group.
“Our finding of protection amongst younger women lends additional weight to the concept of household protection, since these may be the persons most frequently in direct contact with young children,” the researchers wrote. “It is possible that some protection is a result of exposure to vaccine-virus shed by infants.”
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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