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A nosocomial sapovirus-associated outbreak of gastroenteritis in adults

2004; Informa; Volume: 37; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00365540410020974

1651-1980

Peter Johansson, Katarina Bergentoft, Per Anders Larsson, Gunilla Magnusson, Anders Widell, Margareta Thorhagen, Kjell‐Olof Hedlund,

Viral Infections and Immunology Research

The human caliciviruses norovirus and sapovirus are leading causes of acute, non-bacterial gastroenteritis. In contrast to norovirus, sapovirus is known to give infections mainly in infants and young children. We describe a nosocomial outbreak of gastroenteritis associated with sapovirus involving 23 adult patients and medical staff. The mean age of the patients and medical staff was 52 y and the major signs and symptoms were nausea, diarrhoea, vomiting, abdominal cramp, headache, myalgia and fever. More patients had diarrhoea (72%) than vomiting (56%) and the mean duration of symptoms was 6 d. A secondary attack rate of 45% was seen affecting in all 10 persons with a mean age of 29 y. Sequences of the capsid gene revealed a 97% nucleotide homology to the sapovirus genogroup IV reference strain Chiba/000671T/1999. This is one of the first reported nosocomial outbreaks of sapovirus infection among adults and shows that a diagnostic test for sapovirus should be included in investigation of gastroenteritis among adults.