Norovirus, the Next Target for Vaccine Development in China

Abstract

Enteric virus-induced disease, even death, greatly affects the life quality of children <5 years of age in China, and imposes a heavy sociometric burden on family and government. The infectious diarrhea diseases and hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD) have been enrolled in the list of notifiable infectious diseases in China. Fortunately, the highly valued rotavirus-induced diarrhea and enterovirus 71-induced HFMD can be prevented by the commercial vaccines. However, the underrated norovirus vaccine is still in progress, even norovirus was considered as the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis in children <5 years of age in the world, partially due to the inability to cultivate norovirus. Besides, the broad genetic and serotypic diversity of norovirus also complicates selection of candidate vaccine strain(s). Therefore, the primary objective of this article is to review norovirus epidemics in China recur to the data published in recent five years.