Enteroviruses belong to the Picornaviridae family. These are small nonenveloped RNA viruses, the genome is a linear strand of positive polarity RNA. Enteroviruses can infect a number of tissues including the liver, muscle, nerve and pancreas - when occurs secondary viraemia.

In temperate climates enterovirus infections are mainly seasonal (May-October) and mainly affect children and adolescents. Enteroviruses are a major cause of viral meningitis and are also associated with heart disease, respiratory tract, skin / mucosal and neonatal diseases.

Real-time RT-PCR allows for the highly sensitive identification of enterovirus serotypes (compared to traditional serum neutralization typing, which may not be sufficiently sensitive to certain serotypes (coxsackie A virus and enteroviruses 68-71).

Examination

  • Real-time RT-PCR detects a fragment of highly conserved non-coding region 5 of the following serotypes:
    • Enterovirus A: Coxsackievirus A4, A6 to A8, A10, A14, A16, A16V, Enterovirus 71, 76
    • Enterovirus B: Coxsackievirus A9, B1 to B6, echovirus 1-7, 9, 11-21, 24-27, 29-33, enterovirus 69, 74, 75, 77, 78, 93
    • Enterovirus C: Coxsackievirus A11, A13, A17, A20, A21, A24, A24V, Poliovirus 1, 2, 3
    • Enterovirus D: Enterovirus 68, 70, 94.
    • !!! (detects Parechoviruses 1, 2, 3, rhinoviruses 9, 39, 89 and rhinoviruses 1B, 14, 17, 22 and 87) !!!
  • Material: cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), respiratory samples (cervical swabs or nasopharyngeal), stool specimens and cell cultures, biopsy
  • Transport of: Frozen samples on ice

References

  1. Tapparel C, Siegrist F, Petty TJ, Kaiser L. Picornavirus and enterovirus diversity with associated human diseases. Infect Genet Evol. 2013 Mar;14:282-93.
  2. Pankuweit S, Klingel K. Viral myocarditis: from experimental models to molecular diagnosis in patients. Heart Fail Rev. 2013 Nov;18(6):683-702.
  3. Votava M. a kol.: Lékařská mikrobiologie speciální, Neptun, 2003.