The Infectious Intestinal Disease Study (IID Study) was a large case control study of gastroenteritis carried out in the UK between 1993-1996 [24] with the aim to determine the burden and aetiology of sporadic cases IID in the UK population. Initially, the use of classical microbiology diagnostic methods and electron microscopy (for virus detection) failed to detect a potential aetiological agent or toxin in 49% of the cases [25] . Retesting of the archived samples from this study using molecular methods for the detection of enteric viruses, bacteria and protozoa revealed viruses to be the most common aetiological agents of gastroenteritis,the diagnostic gap for IID was reduced to 25% from 49% [26] . The aim of the present study was to evaluate the role of HBoVs in IID in the UK population, using archived DNA samples from the matched case-control IID-1 study [26] . In addition, the presence specifically of HBoV-1, 2 or 3 was investigated in order to determine any possible associations between specific HBoV genotypes and IID.