You don't usually need to get medical advice unless there's a risk of a more serious problem. You need to drink more than usual to replace the fluids lost from vomiting and diarrhoea — as well as water, adults could also try fruit juice and soup.
Avoid giving fizzy drinks or fruit juice to children as it can make their diarrhoea worse. Babies should continue to feed as usual, either with breast milk or other milk feeds. Babies and young children, especially under a year old, have a greater risk of becoming dehydrated. You don't normally need to see your GP if you think you or your child has norovirus, as there's no specific treatment for it.
Antibiotics won't help because norovirus is caused by a virus. Your GP may suggest sending off a sample of your stool to a laboratory to confirm whether you have norovirus or another infection.
Home Illnesses and conditions Infections and poisoning Norovirus. Norovirus can be very unpleasant but usually clears up by itself in a few days. You can normally look after yourself or your child at home. Symptoms of norovirus You're likely to have norovirus if you experience: suddenly feeling sick projectile vomiting watery diarrhoea Some people also have a slight fever, headaches , painful stomach cramps and aching limbs.
But cruise ships are hardly the only place where noroviruses thrive. Schools get cleared out from time to time by the pathogens the name norovirus comes from Norwalk, Ohio, where it was first isolated from a school during a outbreak. Nursing homes are fertile ground, too, in part because people there often have weak immune systems. While healthy people can clear out a norovirus after a couple of exhausting days, the virus can cling to people with weak immune systems for months or even years.
You may have wrongly called it a stomach flu. Seventy thousand of them end up hospitalized, and nearly die. Things are worse in developing countries, where people are less likely to get rigged to an IV to get pumped full of fluids. It would be very nice if we only had to worry about getting noroviruses once and then could enjoy protection from them for the rest of our lives.
As a strain of norovirus encounters this short-lived defense, it evolves new ways to evade our immune systems. A modified strain can then sweep around the world in as little as three months. While some drugs show promise in blocking noroviruses from infecting cells, none have passed muster in a clinical trial on people.
The best hope to put a real dent in the reign of noroviruses may be vaccines. Last year, scientists at Baylor College of Medicine reported that a vaccine could provide some protection against the virus.
A vaccine that leaves more than a third of people vulnerable to a virus is not exactly a silver bullet. But against such a perfect pathogen, even a little relief can ease a lot of pain.
For more information, check out norovirus expert Stephanie Karst talking about noroviruses with the gang at This Week in Virology.
For viruses in general, see my book A Planet of Viruses. Update pm: Changed England to Britain and fixed some typos. A lot of those readers have asked how to get rid of norovirus. Looking over their questions, I realized that I should add some practical advice along with the natural history. In my original post, I wrote that it resists bleaching. So they do the next best thing and test out the noroviruses they can raise—ones that infect cat and mice.
We can only hope that human noroviruses work the same way. All rights reserved. In Britain alone. Share Tweet Email. Go Further. Animals Wild Cities This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city. Animals This frog mysteriously re-evolved a full set of teeth.
However, they are still contagious and can spread the virus to others. Seek medical attention if you develop diarrhea that doesn't go away within several days. Also, call your doctor if you have severe vomiting, bloody stools, stomach pain or dehydration.
Noroviruses are highly contagious and are shed in the feces of infected humans and animals. You can get norovirus by:. Noroviruses are difficult to kill off because they can withstand hot and cold temperatures and most disinfectants.
For most people, norovirus infection usually clears up within a few days and isn't life-threatening. But in some people — especially children, older adults and people with compromised immune systems — norovirus infection can cause dehydration. Norovirus infection can cause severe dehydration, malnutrition and even death, especially in people who are older or immunocompromised, or in women who are pregnant. Children who are dehydrated might cry with few or no tears.
They might be unusually sleepy or fussy. Norovirus infection is highly contagious, and anyone can become infected more than once. To help prevent its spread:. Mayo Clinic does not endorse companies or products. Advertising revenue supports our not-for-profit mission.
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