Review article
Viral gastroenteritis
N. Vicković
A. Beus
Abstract
Viruses make up 30–40 % of known agents causing acute infectious diarrhoea. The most common among them are rotaviruses and intestinal adenoviruses, that cause diarrhoea in children aged 6–24 months. Sometimes nonimmune adults in their surroundings can become infected as well. In others, causative pathogens of viral diarrhoea are Norwalk and Norwalk-like viruses, astroviruses, caliciviruses, etc. Viral gastroenteritises have similar clinical symptoms. They are all transmitted by faecal-oral-route and are highly contagious, because infected persons excrete a large number of viruses by stool (persons with rotavirus infection excrete 1010 viruses in one gram of stool), and infectious dose is very small – only a few viral particles can cause diarrhoea. Immunological methods are used to detect viral particles in the stool of infected patients. Immunological methods currently used at the University Hospital for Infectious Diseases »Dr. Fran Mihaljević« (latex-agglutination, immunochromatography test) can detect only viral particles of rotavirus and adenovirus in stool, which is one of the reasons for etiologically unclear cases of acute infectious diarrhoea among adults.
Keywords
viruses; gastroenteritis acuta
Hrčak ID:
12747
URI
Publication date:
17.3.2005.
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