The Impact of Rotavirus Vaccination on Discharges for Pediatric Gastroenteritis in Italy: An Eleven Year (2009-2019) Nationwide Analysis

In Italy, despite the documented positive effects of rotavirus (RV) vaccination on reducing the burden of RV disease, an updated national assessment of its impact on clinical outcomes is still lacking. This study aims to analyze the implementation of RV vaccination in Italy, evaluating its impact on discharges for acute pediatric gastroenteritis (AGE). A retrospective analysis, including hospital discharge records and data on vaccination coverage for children aged 0-71 months from 2009 to 2019, was conducted. We examined trends in hospital discharge standardized incidence before and after vaccine introduction using a negative binomial mixture model with fixed effects to evaluate the impact of universal vaccination. The percentage of vaccination coverage increased over the years, from <5% between 2009 and 2013 to 26% in 2017, reaching 70% in 2019. The standardized incidence of discharges decreased over the period from 16.6/100,000 inhabitants in 2009-2013 to 9.9/100,000 inhabitants in 2018-2019. In this phase, about 15% of the estimated hospital discharges were avoided compared with those estimated in the first phase. The implementation of RV vaccination reduced AGE incidence discharges in children aged 0-71 months. Further efforts are needed to continue monitoring the vaccination effect over time and to increase vaccination coverage.