Comparison of detection rates of herpes virus and enterovirus in paired cerebrospinal fluid and serum specimens of patients with viral encephalitis / 中华实验和临床病毒学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To compare the detection rate of herpes virus and enterovirus (EV) in paired cerebrospinal fluid and serum samples of patients with viral encephalitis.@*Methods@#A total of 109 paired cerebrospinal fluid and serum specimens were collected from patients who were clinically diagnosed with suspected viral meningitis in Children′s Hospital of Hunan from December 2017 to February 2018. One-step nested real-time fluorescence quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR were used to detect enterovirus and herpes virus respectively and the detection rates of different virus and sample types were analyzed. SPSS 17.0 was used for statistical analysis of the test result .@*Results@#Among the 109 pairs of specimens, the positive rates of human herpes virus type 6 (HHV6), herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV1), Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), cytomegalovirus (CMV) and enterovirus group A type 71(EV-A71) in serum were 7.34%, 4.59%, 7.34%, 9.17% and 10.09%, respectively, and in cerebrospinal fluid were 5.50%, 2.75%, 0, 5.50%, and 6.42%, respectively. The result showed that there were statistically significant differences between the two types of specimens for herpes virus and enterovirus (P<0.05). In cerebrospinal fluid and serum samples, the longest time for EV-A71 positive detection was 2 and 7 days after onset, respectively; the longest time for CMV positive detection was 3 and 26 days after onset, respectively; the longest time for HHV6 positive detection was 7 and 8 days after onset, respectively; the longest time for HSV1 positive detection was both 12 days after the onset; in serum samples, the longest time for EBV positive detection was10 days after onset, but in cerebrospinal fluid, no EBV was detected within 10 days of onset.@*Conclusions@#EV-A71 is the most prevalent pathogen causing viral encephalitis in hunan, the overall positive rate of virus in serum samples was higher than that in cerebrospinal fluid samples. Virus stays longer in serum than in cerebrospinal fluid. It is suggested that the time is of great significance for the pathogen detection of children with viral encephalitis, the specimen type can be selected reasonably according to the time of onset.