Purpose/Principle

Due to a need to distinguish enterovirus from parechovirus infection, and to specifically detect EV-D68 and EV-A71, Children’s Hospital Colorado developed an in-house assay for detection of enterovirus, parechovirus, EV-D68, and EV-A71 RNA from upper respiratory, lesion, throat, and colorectal swabs, and plasma. In this assay, RNA extracted from patient samples is subjected to reverse transcription followed by realtime PCR amplification using primers and fluorescent probes targeted against the four components (panenterovirus, pan-parechovirus, EV-D68, and EV-A71).