Environmental surveillance demonstrates that human parechoviruses circulate in the population to a higher extent than expected based on clinical infections in young children.
Supports environmental surveillance to track parechovirus circulation beyond clinical reports; leaves open whether incidence is underestimated in children.
The circulation of human parechoviruses (HPeVs) in the population was studied by environmental surveillance comprising of molecular analyses of sewage samples (n = 89) that were collected from 15 different locations in The Netherlands. Samples were taken from sewage originating from schools (n = 9) or from parts of municipalities (n = 6) during the Dutch school year 2010-2011. At 13/15 locations HPeV1, HPeV3, or HPeV6 RNA was detected at least once; however, sequence diversity did not reflect associations in time or place. A higher percentage of positives was observed in the samples originating from the municipalities. It was demonstrated that HPeV circulated in the studied population to a higher extent than would be expected from the current knowledge on infections predominating in young children.
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Lodder et al. (2013) studied this question.
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