Molecular characteristics of human coxsackievirus B1 infection in Korea, 2008–2009

This study was performed to analyze epidemiological and molecular characteristics of coxsakievirus (CV) B1 infection associated with severe neonatal illness cases and death in Korea during 2008–2009. Through a nationwide surveillance program, specimens were collected from 104 patients infected with CVB1. The detection of enteroviruses (EVs) from specimens was subjected to a diagnostic real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in the 5′-non-coding region (NCR). A semi-nested PCR was conducted to amplify sequences from the VP1 region and sequence comparison was performed with reference strains registered in Genbank. Male-to-female ratio confirmed approximately 5:4. The major clinical manifestation of patients infected with CVB1 was aseptic meningitis (55.8%). The other clinical symptoms were herpangina or hand–foot–mouth disease (22.1%) and neonatal sepsis (7.7%). The sequences of CVB1 isolates were divided into four genetic clusters (A–D) with at least 15% diversity between the clusters. Almost all the CVB1 isolates in Korea from 2008 to 2009 were in cluster D (except for 2 cases). The homology relationship was also similar between the Korean CVB1 strains and US strain (above 93%). It is possible that Korean CVB1 isolates found during 2008–2009 originated from the US strains found during 2006–2008. The identification of CVB1 in South Korea shows the potential of EVs to cause serious disease in an unpredictable fashion. J. Med. Virol. 85:110–115, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.