Pathogen surveillance of enterovirus infections in Korea in 2018

Yoon Youngsil, Kang Hae Ji, Lee Deog-Yong, Kang Chun, Choi Wooyoung
Division of Viral Diseases, Center for Laboratory Control of Infectious Disease, KCDC

Enteroviruses are known to cause many clinical manifestations in humans including hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD), herpangina, respiratory illness, aseptic meningitis, encephalitis, and myocarditis. Some enterovirus-infected cases related with severe syndromes such as acute flaccid paralysis, acute flaccid myelitis, and sepsis have been reported. We analyzed suspected patients with enterovirus infections in Korea in 2018. A total of 2,485 clinical specimens from the patients was tested, using real-time reverse tranion polymerase chain reaction (Realtime RT-PCR) and conventional RT-PCR targeting the 5’ untranslated region and VP1 gene of enterovirus, respectively. Among them, 743 cases (29.9%) were detected to be positive for enterovirus infections by either real-time RT-PCR or conventional RT-PCR, or both. The most frequent enterovirus type was CV-A10 (18.7%, 139/743), followed by CV-B5 (9.4%, 70/743), E30 (8.1%, 60/743), and E11 (7.1%, 53/743) in laboratory-confirmed cases. Based on the symptoms, the detection rate of enterovirus was 66.8% (278/416) for HFMD and herpangina, 26.9% (237/881) for aseptic meningitis, and 23.3% (27/116) for HFMD with complications. These surveillance data provide information about recent enterovirus infections at a national level and may encourage progress toward prevention of these infections.

Keywords: Enterovirus, Enterovirus Infections, Human, Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease, Aseptic Meningitis, Encephalitis, Myocarditis, Surveillance data