Objective: The etiologic agents and disease severity of acute gastroenteritis differ with respect to the age of the patient, and season of the year. In most of pediatric cases with gastroenteritis the causative agents are viruses, and rotaviruses play an important place among agents of gastroenteritis. This study was aimed to investigate the rate of rotavirus antigen positivity in children with acute gastroenteritis and to evaluate the results with respect to the age of the patients, and season of the year.

Materials and Methods: A total of 1241 stool samples obtained from children between 0-16 years, sent to our laboratory between January 1st 2005 and July 31th 2011,were investigated. Rotavirus antigen was searched in stool samples with Enzyme Linked Fluorescent Assay (ELFA; Vidas; BioMerieux, France) technique.

Results: Rotavirus antigen positivity was detected in 247 (19.9%) samples. It was seen that rotavirus antigen positivity was detected most frequently in the first five years of age (21.8%) and most commonly between six months and two years of age (23.2%) within this age range. Most of the positive samples were detected during winter.

Conclusion: The results of this study indicated that rotavirus should be considered as a cause of acute gastroenteritis especially in winter and especially in children less than five years of age and the diagnosis could rely on rotavirus antigen test in stool samples.