Information About the Rotateq Vaccine

I think it is important to get this vaccine. My friends child got the virus and ended up in the hospital and then everyone in the family got it. Her children are not in any form of day care or MDO. It is a liquid they swallow and is no big deal. I got it for my baby it's better to be safe than sorry and so many people wish their kids could get it but it wasn't available.

Hi J.,
My two cents and personal opinion:
I had heard varied comments on this vaccine before I took my son in for his 4 month shots. His pediatrician, whom I really trust, said that he recommends it. I think he said that rotovirus is one of the most common reasons for hospitilizations of children; that most kids get it. He conveyed to us that it would definitely be worth it if you could prevent it or reduce the chances of getting it. I think the fact that there is a new wave of people not vaccinating is more of a reason to vaccinate. Diseases like polio and small pox may come back since more and more people are not vaccinating, putting themselves and everyone else in danger. My son also seemed to like the taste of the vaccine, which was funny. He screamed for a while that evening after all of his 4 month vaccinations, but the next morning he was fine and we didn't have any bad reactions to it. I would do it again but everyone has to make that decision for themselves.

My nephew had to be hospitalized with the rotovirus for two days to get rehydrated, but like the previous lady it is generally not a life threatening illness, however neither are a lot of the other vaccines like chicken pox. He was sick for over a week with it. I however don't have any advise on to give or not to give because after all it has only been out for a year and I would be sceptical as well. Trust your gut! Ask if your doctor has seen reactions from it in the last year.

J. - My personal opinion is to not vaccinate against rotavirus. My son has had it, and while it wasn't fun, I never really felt his life was in danger, unlike the diseases that the other vaccines protect against. The biggest fear from rotavirus is dehydration from diarrhea or vomiting. Should your daughter contract the virus, you can work with your pediatrician to ensure proper hydration.

I would be extremely hesitant to give my child the vaccine. The fact that your doctor told you a previous one was taken off the market due to side effects should be a clue. Maybe see what the side effects are and decide if they are worse than diarrhea and vomiting. Rotavirus in some cases can lead to hospitalization to more quickly hydrate, but what type of hospitalizations and treatments will be required should your daughter have a serious side effect? Not worth the chance.

Should this vaccine ever become part of the routine, required and recommended vaccines for all children and designated by the state, then, I would consider it. But not a new one. Not on a baby. Not when you can treat the virus, should she get it, on your own.

This is just my opinion, though. I am very pro-vaccine, including flu shots. But this one seems not so great. But maybe that's because I've gone through 2 bouts of rotavirus with my son and he was perfectly fine both times, and I do not know of anyone who had to hospitalize their child from the virus. I'd be interested to hear an opinion from someone who had a bad time (like hospitalization) with the virus.

Good luck!

S.

This is from my pediatrician... not specific just to this vaccine but to vaccinations in general:

Vaccine: to vaccinate or not

There are many people who are against vaccinations for varied reasons. They put articles on the Net and in magazines. And on TV. It seams there is a growing move away from traditional doctors and medications and there is a booming business in Herbs, home deliveries, and alternate medicine. Many have been disillusioned by doctors who are not current or when things turn bad for no specific reason.

When a baby gets a vaccine and immediately after has any symptom, the knee jerk reflex is to blame it on the vaccine. I guess that is where superstitions come from. A black cat crossed in front of someone who then had bad things happen and he blamed it on the cat. Only through scientific studies comparing the treated and control groups have we come far in our understanding and knowledge. Many myths have been dispelled and we have proven the snake oil did not help your medical condition. Many quacks have been stopped by proving their stuff did not work.

But it is hard to convince a parent whose baby dies the night after the vaccination that it was not the vaccine. Also the person who develops arthritis or seizures after receiving a vaccine. Thousands of infants receive their DPT at 2 months in the United States and there will be some crib death that night. Studies showed that there were just as many crib deaths the night before they were due to have their shots as there were after. The frequency of crib death in the vaccinated infants was the same as those infants who were unvaccinated. There is definite proof that the shots did not cause crib death but try convincing that parent whose baby dies after the shots. Seizures, delayed development, and Autism occur and are not caused by vaccines. Scientific studies have proven it.

There are reported rare cases of damage after vaccinations. These are 1/310,000 patients. There are risks. Not only to these vaccines but to just living. Going to school or driving the car. We take precautions like buckling up but there are still risks. These vaccines are made as safe as we know how at the level of our technology at that time. They are continually improving and making them safer. But there are risks.

We look at the risks and the benefits. Like the seat belt that can save you 90% of the time but may cause problems 5 % of the time. You still buckle up. More people were killed in the Civil War than in WWI, WWII, Korea, and Viet Nam all added together. Only 1/3 were killed by bullets. 2/3’s died from Polio, Measles, Meningitis, and other diseases we vaccinate against. This year 3 million children will die from tetanus, measles, and meningitis……. not in the USA because we vaccinate. The last case of meningitis I saw was 10 years ago when the HIB vaccine came out. The child was due to come in for it’s check up and shots but the mother missed the appointment. The child developed meningitis and died at Children’s hospital. We went from 20,000 cases/year of meningitis to now a only a few per year. It is now so rare that you hear about it on the news. You did not hear much about it years ago because it was so common that it was not news. 10% die and 50% are brain damaged. In just one year we went from 20,000 cases to a few hundred. It is saving many children.

We have eliminated Small Pox from the face of the earth and now do not give the vaccine. Measles is about to be eliminated from the US. We eliminated Polio from all of N. and S. America, and soon will eliminate it from the world. We now give the injectable form of the polio rather than the live vaccine. Some day we will not have to give that vaccine but one has to wait until it is gone for sure before we stop it. One must weigh the risks and benefits.

It is so hard to get medications and especially vaccines approved by the FDA because they are trying to keep it safe and effective. There will be a vaccine soon released against Human Papillomavirus (HPV) that causes veneal warts and cervical cancer. We will almost eliminate cervical cancer with it. I hope they get a vaccine against AIDS soon.

Yes there are risks. Would I get my child or grandchild vaccinated today? Definitely!

Dr. Knapp

this is only my personal opinion as i am not a doctor but i beleive we are vaccinating our children too much! i don't beleive they're little bodies can take that much vaccines. my 2nd daughter was 5wks premie and i wish i would've waited to get her 1st vaccines as she had a really bad reaction. she felt horrible for 3days and screamed her head off! she had never done that before. i think as a parent you have to ultimately do what you feel is right for your child and don't let the docs talk you into it. i am very blessed that my pediatrician also believes this. she always tells me to do what i feel comfortable with because they are my children and the mom always blames herself if something goes wrong. side effects are rare but i have a very close friend who's son has a slight autism from his 18mo vaccines-his reaction was immediate after the vaccine-he's now 9yrs old and doing much better but it has been alot of work and he still is not quite up to his grade level yet. as far as the roto virus my doc told me about that too but i have decided against it because they have already had it and as long as your child is eating healthy washing hands and keep strangers from touching your child then it will be fine. it's no fun to have a sick child but the vaccine is no guarentee that your child won't get it so what's the point? sorry for rambling-just do what you feel is right deep down in your soul don't worry what others think including your doc. you do what you feel comfortable with for your child. i hope this helps-God bless!

I understand that vaccinations (especially new ones) can be frightening -- faulty reporting doesn't help the issue. My pediatrician said that the research that was done which resulted in the cessation of that vaccine was actually not executed very well.

The decision is, of course, yours to make. My older daughter had it (she's seven). By the time my four year old came along, it had been pulled off the market. Last year, my four year old caught it. It was horrible. To watch your child become dehydrated, somewhat lifeless, have a change of color, and vomit non-stop (even when there is nothing left to come up) is a terrible, frightening experience for any parent -- and VERY dangerous for the child. A child can start to seizure, and the list of dangers can obviously go on. My daughter was hospitalized for this condition. My seven year old, who may have caught it from her - experienced a stomach ache, diarrhea, a fever of 103 - and was fine about 8-10 hours later. She had had the vaccine.

Normally I do not respond when parents ask about medical conditions/shots. However, since that was such a horrible experience for our family, I felt compelled to share our story with you.

We were in the exact same situation last month. we did end up getting the vaccine. My son is not in daycare, nor do we have any other children. So him contracting rotavirus is limited. However, we are able to carry the virus with or without side effects. We had no side effects to the vaccine; he seemed to like the taste of it too!Also, this is a different vaccine than what was taken off the market. The vaccine was taken off the market about 2 years ago was an injection. It produced a form of the rotovirus which i forget the name of.
Hope that helps with your decision.

Because this vaccine is relatively new (I know there was a strain in 1999) our peditrician advised weighing our options, doing research etc. So, I did at sites like (http://www.webmd.com/content/article/119/113193.htm) and decided ultimately not to do it. Not for any other reason than I felt like it wasn't completely necessary. They get so many vaccines. My 8-month-old is in an in-home daycare (with one other child) so I didn't feel like it was warranted for us. Go with your gut. I just felt like it needed to be out on the market longer and have more research poured into it. I am pregnant again, and with this child I may have different feelings. Good luck.

I wouldn't do it. Our pediatricians said don't do it. I'd rather deal with rotavirus itself. (which wasn't all that horrible when our son had it back in February)

what a great question. i am interested in other's feedback too.

some virus was going around at my daughters' daycare and some kids had to be out for several days. my daughter was sick for 2d with a very mild vomiting. she had had the rotavirus vaccine. i wonder if she got a milder sickness bc of having had the vaccine. she never had a fever or diarhea!

if she wasn't in daycare, i think i would have hesitated to do the vaccine since it is so new.

good luck

I agree with some of the other moms - we vaccinate too much. If he were to get the rotavirus, he would build a natural immunity to it, and he could not get it again. A vaccine can never provide children with a natural immunity (hence boosters), and by vaccinating you risk the child getting it anyway. Not that I condemn any mom for vaccinating - completely their decision for their family. Just giving my 2 cents.

Wow - I have a very strong opinion about this one. I have two sons, and my first son got rotavirus about two or three times and he's 2 3/4 years old now. His rotavirus only lasted about a day or two and was always more vomit than the other end. Totally no big deal, right? When my second son was six months old, he got a terrible case of rotavirus. He had it the entire month of May! We went to the doctor three times, had very expensive labwork done (the rotavirus and resulting symptoms persisted for so long the lab tested for parasites - yuck!! The tests came back negative, we just had some sort of mutant monster strain of rota); it was extremely draining financially. (Our medical plan has a $1000 deductible for each person in it.) We ended up paying almost the whole deductible in one month. It was also extremely draining emotionally to take care of a six-month old who was sick for so long. It was hard to care also for his two year old brother when the sick one needed most of my time.

His main problem was constant, painful, never-ending diahhrea which resulted in the worst diaper rash I've ever seen in my whole life! It started with the reddish little dots of diaper rash, but then all the dots formed a larger circle, then all the flesh just kind of came off. Unbelievable, I know! So he has this red, raw patch on his little bottom about the size of 1 1/2 coffee cups in diameter. We put so much diaper rash medicine on but of course it won't stick to raw flesh so our doctor's advice was to leave him undiapered for a month!! Oh my gosh this was terrible. I had to buy puppy pads to put on my lap when I nursed him. He crawled around on puppy pads in our house and slept on them at night. As you know, babies just kinda scrunch up their blankets when they sleep, so the puppy pads were invariably scrunched up and the sheets, bedding, etc got pooped all on. So, I was doing at least one load of laundry a day for a month just for him, still having to do the rest of the laundry when I could squeeze it in too, just to keep up with him. I was washing my hands, my baby's hands, and my two-year-old's hands like crazy to make sure only one child in the house had this horrible sickness. I would have gone over the edge if they both had it at the same time - which very luckily they didn't! My older one never got it from his brother.

It was by far the worst baby experience I've had with him and his brother combined.

Then I found out that a vaccine could have saved me all this drama and my poor son so much pain? I was so upset that he just missed the vaccine roll-out by a few months. It would have been priceless to have it. Even if I could have paid $1000 that we paid in medical bills for the vaccine instead and skipped the horrible month of non-stop laundry, non-stop mess, non-stop pain for my son - I would do it and we're not a rich family at all.

That's my story. I would vaccinate! :) By the way, he's not in day care or Mother's Day Out, and we weren't going to the nursery very much then, either, so he got this all just from I'm not sure where. Could you imagine how much more important it would be to get this if you end up having to go back to work or even if you go to the gym or church regularly and he's in the nursery?

My daughter just finished her series. We got doses at 2, 6 and 8 months. We have seen no ill side effects from this. Our most recent visit Rotqteq was the only vac. we had and she was fine. It is aprox $100 per dose and there are three doses. BCBS started covering it, double check your insurance. Good luck

I wouldn't do it. I'd look at long-term studies of vaccines to determine how effective they are (how often are boosters required?), what long-term complications could be attributed to the vaccine (is there a disproportionate number of people who had a particular vaccine suffering from a particular condition 10 years later?) and are the complications of getting the virus worth the potential complications of the vaccine.

IMO, if there aren't long-term studies, I don't feel comfortable with the vaccine. My daughter had a slight reaction to a vaccine and I feel horrendous guilt over it. I didn't do research before vaccinating because I just accepted that it was the "best" way to protect your child. Quite honestly, I'd rather lose a child to a vaccine-preventable disease than a vaccine. I can't control if she gets sick, but I can control whether or not toxins are introduced into her bloodstream. I take offense to doctors who try to use scare tactics on parents. Yes, I know that there are risks to not vaccinating. I'm not stupid, I'm just ok with those risks. I am no longer ok with the risks to vaccinating. If another parent is not ok with the risks to not vaccinating and is ok with the risks to vaccinating, then that is fine by me. What works for one family may not work for another. :)

My 7 month old is about to go in for his third and final dose. He has had no problems. I would do it for sure.

R.

We did not know there was a vaccine for this, but my daughter got rotavirus last Jan. She just couldn't keep up with the fluids and got severely dehydrated and was hospitalized for 3 days. It was very scary. To see your child just lay there as if she was on the verge of death was something I never want to experience again or have others experience. I going to get info because it's bound to come up this winter. By the way, by daughter wasn't in daycare or anything. I think she got it from the playgrounds at the mall.