Serological survey of neutralizing antibodies to eight major enteroviruses among healthy population

Abstract

Human enteroviruses (EVs) are the most common causative agents infecting human, causing many harmful diseases, such as hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD), herpangina (HA), myocarditis, encephalitis, and aseptic meningitis. EV-related diseases pose a serious worldwide threat to public health. To gain comprehensive insight into the seroepidemiology of major prevalent EVs in humans, we firstly performed a serological survey for neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) against Enterovirus A71 (EV-A71), Coxsackie virus A16 (CV-A16), Coxsackie virus A6 (CV-A6), Coxsackie virus A10 (CV-A10), Coxsackie virus B3 (CV-B3), Coxsackie virus B5 (CV-B5), Echovirus 25 (ECHO25), and Echovirus 30 (ECHO30) among the healthy population in Xiamen City in 2016, using micro-neutralization assay. A total of 515 subjects aged 5 months to 83 years were recruited by stratified random sampling. Most major human EVs are widely circulated in Xiamen City and usually infect infants and children. The overall seroprevalence of these eight EVs were ranged from 14.4% to 42.7%, and most of them increased with age and subsequently reached a plateau. The co-existence of nAbs against various EVs are common among people ≥ 7 years of age, due to the alternate infections or co-infections with different serotypes of EVs, while most children were negative for nAb against EVs, especially those < 1 year of age. This is the first report detailing the seroepidemiology of eight prevalent EVs in the same population, which provides scientific data supporting further studies on the improvement of EV-related disease prevention and control.

Rui Zhu and Tong Cheng contributed equally to this work

Rui Zhu and Tong Cheng contributed equally to this work

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NO 31670933, 81401661 and 81601762), the National Science and Technology Major Projects for Major New Drugs Innovation and Development (NO 2017ZX09101005–005–003) and the National Science and Technology Major Project of Infectious Diseases (NO 2017ZX10304402–002–003). The sponsors had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. All authors have declared that no conflict of interest exists.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Supplementary information

The online version of this article (10.1038/s41426-017-0003-z) contains supplementary material.