Letter to the editor regarding “Rotavirus infection beyond the gut”

Alejandro Orrico-Sánchez,¹ Mónica López-Lacort,¹ Cintia Muñoz-Quiles,¹ Miguel Angel Martinez-Beneito,² Javier Díez-Domingo¹

¹Vaccine Research, Fundación para el Fomento de la Investigación Sanitaria y Biomédica de la Comunitat Valenciana, FISABIO-Public Health, Valencia, Spain; ²Health Inequalities, Fundación para el Fomento de la Investigación Sanitaria y Biomédica de la Comunitat Valenciana, FISABIO-Public Health, Valencia, Spain

Gomez-Rial et al, in their review paper “Rotavirus infection beyond the gut”,¹ concluded that there is some degree of protection of the RV vaccination against seizure hospitalizations. A detailed analysis of the potential biases of the literature could lead to a less optimistic position for the vaccine. For example, the protection found in the USA and Australia could be partly due to the uncontrolled influenza vaccine (where the coverage in children under 5 years in EEUU reached 66–75%²). Other studies have small sample sizes, or used poorly adjusted analyses.

Beyond their different degrees of appraisal of the papers depending on the direction of the results, there is a lack of discussion of the publication bias, as this bias disrupts the literature promoting positive findings and hiding negative results.

View the original paper by Gomez-Rial and colleagues.

A Response to Letter has been published for this article.