History of Rotavirus Vaccines Part I: RotaShield

According to hieroglyphic evidence, diarrhea is one of the oldest recorded illnesses, dating as far back as 3300 bc [1]. However, despite major discoveries in microbiology during the past century, the etiology of most diarrheal illnesses remained elusive until relatively recently [2, 3]. Although volunteer studies in the 1940s and 1950s showed that oral administration of bacteria-free stool filtrates derived from patients with diarrhea could induce illness, a suspected viral etiologic agent could not be identified.