Abstract
Enterovirus 71 (EV71) is mainly known as a cause of hand-foot-and-mouth disease (HFMD) but sometimes associated with neurological disease, even as fatal brainstem encephalitis. In Europe, EV71 infections are extremely rare, in contrast to the worldwide situation. This is the first report of molecular characterization of an EV71 strain isolated in Europe that had caused neurological disease. The german strain is closest related to sublineage B2 strains isolated in the United States, which where mainly associated with neurological disease. Phylogenetic analysis also showed that the strain must have been imported to Germany several years ago, and continues to circulate since then.
References
Brown BA, Oberste MS, Alexander JP Jr, Kennett ML, Pallansch MA (1999). Molecular epidemiology and evolution of enterovirus 71 strains isolated from 1970 to 1998. J Virol 73: 9969–9975.
Chan LG, Parashar UD, Lye MS, Ong FG, Zaki SR, Alexander JP, Ho KK, Han LL, Pallansch MA, Suleiman AB, Jegathesan M, Anderson LJ (2000). Deaths of children during an outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease in Sarawak, Malaysia: clinical and pathological characteristics of the disease. Clin Infect Dis 31: 678–683.
Chapman NM, Tracy S, Gauntt CJ, Fortmueller U (1990). Molecular detection and identification of enteroviruses using enzymatic amplification and nucleic acid hybridization. J Clin Microbiol 28: 843–850.
Ho M, Chen ER, Hsu KH, Twu SJ, Chen KT, Tsai SF, Wang JR, Shih SR (1999). An epidemic of enterovirus 71 infection in Taiwan. N Engl J Med 341: 929–935.
Landry ML, Fonseca SN, Cohen S, Bogue CW (1995). Fatal enterovirus type 71 infection: rapid detection and diagnostic pitfalls. Pediatr Infect Dis J 14: 1095–1100.
McMinn P, Lindsay K, Perera D, Chan HM, Chan KP, Cardosa MJ (2001). Phylogenetic analysis of enterovirus 71 strains isolated during linked epidemics in Malaysia, Singapore, and Western Australia. J Virol 75: 7732–7738.
Saitou N, Nei M (1987). The neighbor-joining method: a new method for reconstructing phylogenetic trees. Mol BiolEvol 4: 406–425.
Thompson JD, Higgins DG, Gibson TJ (1994). CLUSTAL W: improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignment through sequence weighting, position-specific gap-penalties and weight matrix choice. Nucleic Acids Res 22: 4673–4680.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kehle, J., Roth, B., Metzger, C. et al. Molecular characterization of an Enterovirus 71 causing neurological disease in Germany. Journal of NeuroVirology 9, 126–128 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1080/13550280390173364
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13550280390173364