Norovirus Gastroenteritis in US Marines in Iraq

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Abstract
In this issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Thornton et al. [1] report the findings of a cross-sectional laboratory study of gastroenteritis that affected a military unit operating during the first portion of the 2003 invasion in central Iraq. The new findings of this report are most evident for norovirus—also known as “Norwalk virus,” “Norwalk-like virus,” and “small, round-structured virus”—a virus for which the known impact among humans has markedly increased since 1990, when the viral genome was first characterized and new diagnostic reagents were designed [2]. Norovirus is and deserves to be listed by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as category B among pathogens of importance to biodefense.