Incidence, Etiology, and Healthcare Utilization for Acute Gastroenteritis in the Community, United States

Knowledge of the epidemiology of sporadic acute gas-troenteritis (AGE) in the United States is limited. During September 2016-September 2017, we surveyed Kaiser Permanente Northwest members in Oregon and Wash-ington, USA, to collect data on the 30-day prevalence of dually defined AGE and diarrhea disease and related health-seeking behavior; from a subset of participants, we obtained a stool specimen. Using the iterative pro-portional fitting algorithm with raked weights, we gener-ated AGE prevalence and annualized rate estimates. We detected norovirus, rotavirus, astrovirus, and sapovirus from submitted stool specimens through real-time quan-titative reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR). We esti-mated a 30-day prevalence of 10.4% for AGE and 7.6% for diarrhea only; annual rates were 1.27 cases/person/ year for AGE and 0.92 cases/person/year for diarrhea only. Of those with AGE, 19% sought medical care. Al-most one quarter (22.4%) of stool specimens from those reporting AGE tested positive for >= 1 viral pathogen, com-pared with 8.2% from those without AGE.