Enteritic viruses
(Sidenote: I’m not a native speaker, so I apologize for any language mistakes. I might also have a focus centered on Europe.)
These viruses aren’t necessarily closely related, but all of them can cause watery diarrhea.
Common traits: - cause watery diarrhea, nausea, fever... - mostly self-limiting --> if any, the therapy would be substituting electrolytes and liquid - Lab testing would be mostly PCR, if you do it at all - fecal-oral transmission
Norovirus
...most annoying little fuck ever... It’s the cause of a lot of hospital infections and we are not “just” talking about the patients, the employees get it too.
Clinic: - very short illness 2-3 days - main symptom is nausea - highly contagious -->transmission via aerosols possible! - incubation takes 12-48 hours - affects both adults and children annoying nosocomial pathogen, because.. - you need less than 100 particles to get infected - water can serve as a vehikel - norovirus is relatibely resistant to chlorid and to heat (good luck with your pipes) - efficent transmission between humans
Rotavirus
It mostly affects young children < 5yo It can affect adults, but it’s not serious for them, since they don’t have symptoms. Typical clinic: - starts with nausea and vomiting - fever - only afterwards the diarrhea starts and continues for up to 5 days ---> the dangerous thing is dehydration! Even today a lot of children in poor countries die because of a rotavirus - incubation 1-2 days
lab: - PCR or ELISA
A vaccination exists!
Adenovirus
affects children below 4 years old
clinic: - mild gastroenteritis - 5-12 days - self-limiting - incubation takes 8-10 days (main indicator for differentiating the infection from other enteritic viruses)