A global vaccine for a global disease -- and end to rotavirus diarrhoea?

Every day, an estimated 11 million people worldwide, mostly children under age 5 years, experience diarrhea. 200,000 of these people become so dehydrated that they must be hospitalized and almost 7000 die on a daily basis. Of the many causes of diarrhea, the relatively common and highly contagious rotavirus causes most episodes and related hospitalizations and deaths. Rotavirus infects practically all children by the time they reach age 5 years. However, the first rotavirus vaccine could well be on the market next year if licensing authorities determine it to be safe and effective. Wyeth-Lederle Vaccines and Pediatrics (WLVP) is the US manufacturer of the vaccine closest to being marketed. WLVP's vaccine, code named RRV-TV, is a live, orally administered Jennerian vaccine, which uses an animal virus to confer protection in humans from the human virus. It is a genetically engineered tetravalent vaccine designed to provoke an immune response against the 4 most common human rotavirus strains and will be marketed in the US as Rotashield and as Rotamune elsewhere in the world. The other vaccine candidate in the late stage of development, a tetravalent vaccine designed by a US research group headed by H. Fred Clark and manufactured by Merck & Co., Inc., is also described. Second- and third-generation vaccines are possible.