Incubation periods of viral gastroenteritis: A systematic review

Background: accurate knowledge of incubation period is important to investigate and to control infectious diseases and their transmission,however statements of incubation period in the literature are often uncited,inconsistent,and/or not evidence based.methods: in a systematic review of the literature on five enteric viruses of public health importance,we found 256 articles with incubation period estimates,including 33 with data for pooled analysis.results: we fit a log-normal distribution to pooled data and found the median incubation period to be 4.5 days (95% ci 3.9-5.2 days) for astrovirus,1.2 days (95% ci 1.1-1.2 days) for norovirus genogroups i and ii,1.7 days (95% ci 1.5-1.8 days) for sapovirus,and 2.0 days (95% ci 1.4-2.4 days) for rotavirus.conclusions: our estimates combine published data and provide sufficient quantitative detail to allow for these estimates to be used in a wide range of clinical and modeling applications. this can translate into improved prevention and control efforts in settings with transmission or the risk of transmission. © 2013 lee et al.; licensee biomed central ltd.