Norovirus vaccine research moves forward

The results of a new clinical trial have found an experimental vaccine is highly effective against a strain of norovirus – the ‘bugs’ that may be responsible for over 90% of the stomach upsets collectively known as gastroenteritis. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), noroviruses cause, in developing countries, an estimated 200,000 deaths annually in children under the age of five. The virus is transmitted chiefly by food, water, or unwashed hands that have been contaminated by the feces of an infected person. Developing a vaccine has been a research challenge. “Noroviruses can’t be grown in culture and don’t infect laboratory animals,” notes clinical virologist Robert Atmar of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. A breakthrough came in the early 1990s, when the Norwalk virus, a strain of norovirus, was cloned in the laboratory of molecular virologist Mary Estes, also at Baylor. Estes found that when a...