The Division of Infectious Diseases outpatient services includes:
- The Special Immunology Clinic which is held three times per week for patients with HIV/AIDS (infants/children and mothers). Services available to patients include a social worker and a nutritionist. Members of the Division of Family Medicine and the Division of Maternal/Fetal Medicine are available for consultation on adult patients.
- The Infectious Diseases Clinic is held twice per week with over 600 patient visits annually. Patients are referred by community physicians for infectious disease related problems.
Inpatient Services include treatment of cystic fibrosis, infectious diseases, HIV/AIDS. Consultation services are provided at the Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters, Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, and Virginia Beach General Hospital. Many of these patients require outpatient follow-up consultation visits.
The Infectious Diseases Sections of the Center for Pediatric Research focuses its activities on gastroenteritis viruses. In the past year, the Section has conducted research on the following topics:
- development of new methods to detect and characterize rotaviruses and astroviruses
- genomic diversity of rotavirus, calicivirus, and astrovirus among circulating strains, including first description of new strains causing human illness
- genetic analysis of the viruses to determine their proper taxonomy and to design laboratory reagents and experiments
- estimating the burden of gastroenteritis caused by these three viruses, to inform decisions about which vaccines should be developed
- detection of new diseases caused by caliciviruses
- development of new drugs to prevent and treat infection and illness by these three viruses
- investigation of the pathogenesis of intussusception, which led to withdrawal of the first licensed rotavirus vaccine
- investigations of new vaccines to prevent human infections and reformulations of old vaccines to make them more effective or reduce their adverse effects
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