Development of a Transcription-Reverse Transcription Concerted Reaction Method for Specific Detection of Human Enterovirus 71 from Clinical Specimens

A transcription-reverse transcription (RT) concerted reaction (TRCR) method was developed for rapid and specific detection of EV71 from clinical specimens. This method was validated with EV71 strains from all of the known genotypes (genotypes A, B1 to B5, and C1 to C5), with detection limits of 10 to 103 copies, and was useful for identification of EV71 from throat swabs of pa-tients with hand, foot, andmouth disease (HFMD). Enterovirus 71 (EV71) is a major etiological agent for hand,foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) and herpangina, along with coxsackievirus A (CVA) types such as CVA10 and CVA16 (1, 10). In contrast to CVA infection (3), EV71 infection is also associated with severe neurological diseases, such as brain-stem encephalitis and poliomyelitis-like paralysis (4, 9, 14) with a high incidence (case severity rate of0.3%) (6). Effective vaccines are not avail-able at present, and only supportive care can be provided for the treatment of severe brain-stem encephalitis (reviewed in reference 15). Because of the rapid progression of symptoms in fatal cases of EV71 infection (12 h after hospitalization) (2), rapid diagnosis of EV71 infection is essential for severely EV71-infected patient