Detection of human enteroviruses and parechoviruses as part of the national enterovirus surveillance in the Netherlands, 1996–2011

Laboratories of the Dutch Working Group on Clinical Virology have routinely performed enterovirus diagnostics in the Netherlands since the early 1960s, with country-wide coverage. Enterovirus-positive samples are typed for clinical and epidemiological purposes, as well as to document the absence of poliovirus circulation. Human parechoviruses 1 and 2, initially recognized as enteroviruses, and since 2006 also the higher numbered human parechovirus types, have been detected as part of this surveillance. The purpose of this report is to describe the national enterovirus surveillance data from stool specimens collected in the Netherlands between 1996 and 2011 by all the participating laboratories. Since 2007, the average annual percentage of human enterovirus- and parechovirus-positive specimens increased from 6.5 to 10.8 % and from 0.3 to 2.5 % of the total numbers of specimens tested, respectively, following a gradual implementation of molecular diagnostics directly on clinical samples. Increased detection rates were observed for human enterovirus species A coxsackieviruses (from 0.1 to 0.5 %). Human enteroviruses of species B, C, and D were detected at average rates of 4.7, 0.04, and 0.005 %, respectively. The introduction of molecular diagnostics also resulted in an increase in the number of untyped enterovirus-positive specimens for which the presence of poliovirus was not excluded (from 1.3 to 3.1 % since 2007). To increase knowledge on human entero- and parechovirus epidemiology and type-specific pathogenesis, as well as to warrant the quality of the poliovirus surveillance in the Netherlands, it is of importance to continue the typing of enterovirus- and parechovirus-positive samples.