Genetic Diversity of Echovirus 6 Strains Circulating in Korea

Echovirus 6 (ECV6) is the prevalent serotype detected in aseptic meningitis cases in Korea. To analyze the genetic variation of ECV6 isolates recently circulating in Korea, we determined the partial sequence of the VP1 capsid gene from 22 Korean ECV6 isolates and performed pairwise analysis against 42 reference strains from the GenBank database using MegAlign. The 22 Korean ECV6 isolates formed 3 distinct genetic clusters: Kor-lineage I, II, and III. The Korean ECV6 strains showed significant genetic diversity with 14.8~22.8% nucleotide divergence among the 3 different lineages. These ECV6 Kor-lineages were demonstrated to belong to different genetic clusters using VP1 sequence-based phylogenetic analysis, implying that the recently circulating Korean ECV6 strains have potential antigenic variation.

Application of a Diagnostic Method Using Reverse Transcription-PCR ELISA for the Diagnosis of Enteroviral Infections / 대한진단검사의학회지

BACKGROUND: Enteroviruses are known as major pathogen for aseptic meningitis. Although rapid diagnosis for enteroviruses is very essential to exclude bacterial infections in patients with meningitis, classical diagnostic method based on virus isolation is not practicable for timely treatment of patients due to its laborious and time-consuming procedure. Recently molecular methodologies as alternatives are routinely used for rapid and sensitive diagnosis for enteroviruses infections. METHODS: Reverse transcription (RT)-PCR ELISA kit for targeting 5'non-coding region (NCR) with highly conserved genetic identity among all genotypes of enteroviruses was introduced in this investigation. RT-PCR ELISA was evaluated about sensitivity and specificity through virus isolation using clinical specimens from patients suspected of enteroviral infections and enteroviral isolates comparing with conventional RT-PCR identifying them. RESULTS: The detection limit of the RT-PCR ELISA was up to 10-100 folds higher than virus isolation using cell culture and conventional RT-PCR. On comparison between above two methods, the detection rate of RT-PCR ELISA for clinical specimens from patients with aseptic meningitis was 7% higher than that of conventional RT-PCR targeting 5'NCR (P=0.016). CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that RT-PCR ELISA developed in this study could be an alternative diagnostic method for the detection of enteroviral genome with high sensitivity and specificity.