Gastroenteritis Causes And Epidemiology

Gastroenteritis Causes And Epidemiology

Author: Ken Donald

Gastroenteritis, also described as inflammation of the
gastrointestinal tract, is a sickness of fever, diarrhea and
vomiting caused by an infectious virus, bacterium or parasite.
It typically is of acute onset, usually lasting less than 10
days and self-limiting. Every so often it is referred to just
as ‘gastro’. It is often named the stomach flu or gastric flu
even though it is not related to influenza.

If only the inflammation is found in the stomach, the term
gastritis is used, and if only the small bowel is affected it
is called enteritis.

Bacterial causes
Bacterial causes are less common in developed countries.
Campylobacter jejuni is responsible for 5-10% of all cases,
whereas Salmonella species, Shigella species, and various
pathogenic types of Escherichia coli is accounted for a tiny
percentage.

In the developing world enterotoxigenic, enteropathogenic and
enteroinvasive E. coli are essential due to the sheer number of
cases, whereas Shigella causes debilitating sickness and has
increasing resistance against low-priced and readily available
antibiotics. Cholera, caused by Vibrio cholerae is one more
important cause of acute diarrhea sickness and following death
in the developing world.

Viral causes
Viral causes are the most common of acute gastroenteritis (AGE)
in children less than 5 years of age, in both developed
countries and developing countries. Rotavirus group A (up to
50% of the cases), noroviruses (the most common cause of
outbreaks of AGE in all age groups), adenoviruses type 40 and
41, astrovirus, and finally sapovirus.

Parasites
An outbreak of Giardia lamblia can cause dehydrating diarrhea
in infants, and Cryptosporidium is known to cause 1-4% of cases
of acute diarrhea in hospitalized infants.

Epidemiology
Worldwide diarrhea caused 4.6 million deaths in children in
1980 alone, and most of these in the developing world. This
figure has now come down considerably to approximately 1.5
million deaths yearly, mainly due to global introduction of
correct oral rehydration therapy (Victora et al 2000).

The commonness in the developed countries is as high as 1-2.5
cases per child per year and a major cause of hospitalization
in this age group.

About The Author: Much more information about Gastroenteritis
http://www.Gastroenteritis-e.com on this website. See for your
self.

No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. | TrackBack URI
You can also bookmark this on del.icio.us or check the cosmos

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.