Rotaviruses have been studied extensively in many parts of the world predominantly by cross-sectional approaches. Such studies have yielded essentially """"""""numerator"""""""" data which indicated that rotaviruses are a major cause of diarrheal illness in infants and young children. There has been a paucity of longitudinal viral gastroenteritis studies that yield not only important """"""""denominator"""""""" data but also valuable insights into the natural history of a pathogen or illness, with special emphasis on epidemiologic, immunologic and laboratory parameters. We, therefore, initiated an intensive examination of anal swab and serum specimens obtained during a previous LID long-term longitudinal study (1955-1969) at Junior Village, a welfare institution for homeless, but otherwise normal children.
Our aim i s to investigate the natural history of rotavirus infections in such a longitudinal setting employing recently developed techniques such as serotyping of rotaviruses with VP7 specific monoclonal antibodies, determining the epitope-specific serologic responses in sequential sera to determine the scope of homotypic and heterotypic responses in order to gain insight into the parameters influencing susceptibility or resistance to rotavirus disease. In addition with the availability of rotavirus strains obtained over 20 years ago, it is planned to compare such strains with current isolates at the genetic level to determine whether significant differences had occurred and the effect of such differences, if found, on resistance to illness.
