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Background: Rotavirus (RV) is an enteric pathogen that has devastating impact on childhood morbidity and mortality worldwide. The immunologic mechanism underlying the protection achieved after RV vaccination is not yet fully understood., Methods: We compared the transcriptome of children affected by community-acquired RV infection and children immunized with a live attenuated RV vaccine (RotaTeq ® )., Results: RV vaccination mimics the wild type infection causing similar changes in children's transcriptome, including transcripts associated with cell cycle, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, intussusception, and abnormal morphology of midgut. A machine learning approach allowed to detect a combination of nine-transcripts that differentiates vaccinated from convalescent-naturally infected children (AUC: 90%; 95%CI: 70-100) and distinguishes between acute-infected and healthy control children (in both cases, AUC: 100%; 95%CI: 100-100). We identified a miRNA hsa-mir-149 that seems to play a role in the host defense against viral pathogens and may have an antiviral role., Discussion: Our findings might shed further light in the understanding of RV infection, its functional link to intussusception causes, as well as guide development of antiviral treatments and safer and more effective vaccines. The nine-transcript signature may constitute a marker of vaccine protection and helps to differentiate vaccinated from naturally infected or susceptible children., Competing Interests: FM-T has received honoraria from GSK, Pfizer, Sanofi Pasteur, MSD, Seqirus, and Janssen for taking part in advisory boards and expert meetings, and for acting as speaker in congresses outside the scope of the submitted work. JG-R has received honoraria from GSK, Pfizer, and MSD for taking part in advisory boards and expert meetings, and for acting as speaker in congresses outside the scope of the submitted work. FM-T has also acted as principal investigator in RCTs of the above-mentioned companies as well as Ablynx, Regeneron, Roche, Abbott, Novavax, and MedImmune, with honoraria paid to his institution. The remaining authors declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Gómez-Carballa, Barral-Arca, Cebey-López, Currás-Tuala, Pischedda, Gómez-Rial, Habgood-Coote, Herberg, Kaforou, Martinón-Torres and Salas.)

There is a growing interest in the possible relationship between rotavirus (RV) vaccine and hospitalizations due to childhood seizures. We explored variation in hospitalization rates after 9 years of vaccination against pre-vaccination period for children <5 years of age from Galicia (Northwest Spain) before and after the introduction of the RV vaccines. Hospitalization rates for childhood seizures in Galician children were compared before and after RV vaccine introduction (in 2007) using different statistical approaches, including time series analyses. Our study cohort totaled 7,712 children <5 years of age admitted to hospital between 2002 and 2015 for "all kind of childhood seizures". Hospitalization rates decreases steadily with reductions ranging from 22.3% (95% CI: 15.0-29.1) in 2008, to 50.9% (95% CI: 45.5-55.7) in 2014, and significant results were also observed for <1, 1, and 2-year-old children in comparison with pre-vaccination period hospitalization rate. Regression models indicate a negative association between RV vaccination and hospitalizations for all kind of seizures. In addition, time series analyses are consistent with this finding and predict that vaccination coverage will affect hospitalization rates for "all kind of seizures" after 9 months. The results strongly support that RV vaccination has significantly reduced hospitalization rates due to childhood seizures., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)