Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Rotavirus causes diarrhea in young mammals all over the world, including infant humans. The diarrhea leads to severe dehydration that can be fatal if left untreated. The dehydration can be treated with fluid therapy and the infection heals itself. Despite the relatively easy treatment half a million children under the age of five dies every year due to diarrhea caused by rotavirus.

Rotavirus sorts into the family Reoviridae and is a double-stranded RNA virus with a segmented genome. The segmentation allows re-assortment in cases of co-infection with different strains which quickly can give rise to new strains of rotavirus. The aim with this literature review was, beside describing rotavirus, to answer the questions: “Does rotaviruses have a zoonotic potential? Is it a risk for humans to be infected by foals carrying the virus?“.

Several studies have shown that animals and humans have fallen ill and shedded rotavirus particles with a genome that consisted of a mix of genes from rotaviruses from different species. This, as well as cases where it has been proven that not only a few genes have been transferred, but whole virions, implicates that rotavirus has a zoonotic potential even though no large clinical outbreaks of disease in humans caused by animal rotavirus has yet been documented.

Equine rotaviruses have been shown to be a homogenic group that in several aspects are different compared with the other groups of rotaviruses. However studies have found cases were equine rotavirus have re-assorted with porcine, bovine and human rotavirus strains. The conclusion is that there is a ground for concern that people working with horses might be infected with equine rotavirus.