Surveillance and prevention of enterovirus spreading and hand-foot-mouth disease occurrence in young children

Abstract

        Hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD) is caused by enteroviruses. HFMD is often found in young children less than 5 year-old at the nursery and kindergarten. There is no specific regimen of treatment and no vaccine for prevention. Therefore, the surveillance and implementation of public health interventions are important and required to reduce the burden of disease and to prevent its spread. In this study, we collected health history of children, 505 and 423 cases in academic year 2007 and 2008 respectively, and designed to implement surveillance and health interventions in 1.5 - 4 year-old children who had studied in academic year 2008 at a school in Bangkok. The results were found that the numbers of patients were significantly reduced 86.34 % and p-value < 0.05 in academic year 2008 as compared with the same age of patients in
academic year 2007. To detect enteroviruses by real time RTPCR, 24 fecal samples were collected from 2 patients and 22 normal children.
        Results showed that 2 samples from HFMD cases and 4 samples from normal cases were positive. Interestingly, enteroviruses could be detected from 4 normal cases and this suggests that the children who had viruses but no symptom could distribute continuously viruses to other children. Therefore, surveillance and health interventions in this study could control and prevent viral spreading. The detection of enterovirus is useful for enhancing prevention and control of disease.