Cause of Gastroenteritis: Gastroenteritis otherwise termed as stomach flu or gastric flu. It is an inflammation of stomach and intestine which causes vomiting, nausea and diarrhea.It is not a disease in itself but can be considered as a symptom of other diseases like shigellosis. The strain of norovirus- the bug is the most common cause of stomach flu.Norovirus is highly contagious and also known as ‘cruise ship virus’.

Adverse Effect of Norovirus: It has been estimated in United States of America that more than million cases of vomiting and diarrhea are due to the norovirus.Children under the age of 5 become an easy prey to this virus and the infection sometimes leads to their death. People acquire this deadly infection through food, water or unhygienic hands, contaminated by the infected feces.Young kids and elderly are at a particular threat because of dehydration. As dehydration is a complicated issue of this infection.The doctors advise the intake of electrolyle to resolve the issue.

Stomach Bug Vaccine-Develpoment: The development of bug vaccine was a research challenge due to the different kinds of norovirus.Norwalk virus is the one common strain of norovirus, cloned in the laboratory at Baylor.Mary estes, the Virologist at Baylor discovered a way to develop the vaccine.Estes found a key protein, VLPs(viruslike proteins). Animals showed strong immunity because of the new VLPs.This led to the development of the new series of VLPs enough to increase the human immunity against virus by LigoCyte pharmaceuticals of Montana.

Benefit of VLP: The VLP based stomach bug vaccine in the pipeline is really effetive.It reduced the severity of the symptoms like nausea, vomiting, dehydration and blood diarrhea and hence was decrease in the rate of infection.Number of persons volunteered, took this vaccine and showed remarkable results. Whether this vaccine will work against other strain of norovirus is not sure.It will be known in future as studies are going on.