Rotavirus (RV)

Rotavirus is the most common cause of diarrhoeal disease among infants and young children. It is a genus of double-stranded RNA viruses in the family Reoviridae. Nearly every child in the world is infected with rotavirus at least once by the age of five. Immunity develops with each infection, so subsequent infections are less severe; adults are rarely affected. There are eight species of rotavirus, referred to as groups A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H. Humans are primarily infected by species A, B and C, most commonly by species A. A–E species cause disease in other animals, species E and H in pigs, and D, F and G in birds. Within rotavirus A there are different strains, called serotypes As with influenza virus, a dual classification system is used based on two proteins on the surface of the virus.