Human Parechovirus-3 and Neonatal Infections

• Main Authors: Guy Boivin, Yacine Abed, François D. Boucher
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2005-01-01
• Series: Emerging Infectious Diseases
• Subjects: Parechovirus-3; enterovirus; neonatal sepsis; hospitalization; PCR; research
• Online Access: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/11/1/04-0606_article

A third serotype of human parechovirus (HPeV) has been recently isolated from stool specimens of a young Japanese child with transient paralysis. We report 3 additional cases of neonatal sepsis caused by HPeV-3 in the fall of 2001 in Canadian infants 7–27 days old. All children were hospitalized with high fever, erythematous rash, and tachypnea for a median of 5 days. The viruses isolated from nasopharyngeal aspirates grew slowly on tertiary monkey kidney cells and were successfully passaged on Vero cells. The predicted amino acid identity of the VP0-VP3-VP1 region of the three viruses was 74.6%–74.8%, 73.4%–73.6%, and 97.0%–97.1% when compared to HPeV-1, -2, and –3 prototype strains, respectively. Although different, our isolates were closely related; amino acid identity was 99.6%–100% for the latter three proteins.