Enterovirus 71 H (E71 H), an isolate from an adult patient with hand-food-mouth disease (HFMD) in China, was serologically similar to the prototype strain E71 BrCr, which was isolated from a patient with aseptic meningitis. The study further analyzed the similarity of E71 H to E71 BrCr at the 5'-noncoding region (NCR), a location in genomic RNA that recently was found to be related to neurovirulence in poliovirus and Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus. Using a reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) technique and a unique primer pair I, a 397 bp product was detected from E71 BrCr, Cox A9 (Griggs), Cox A16 (NIH), Cox B1 (HA antigen 201-468), Cox B5 (wild type), and ECHO 11 (Gregory), but not from E71 H, Cox A24 (Joseph), and ECHO 5 (Noyce). However, all of the viruses generated a 154 bp product using a universal enterovirus primer pair II. Further comparative analysis using primer-directed sequencing of both the E71 H and E71 BrCr 154 bp products revealed that they differed by 12 bases. The variations between the two viruses were clustered in two loci, one in the region of nucleotides 43-61 with eight variations, and the other in the region of nucleotides 120-133 with three variations. The differences within the 5'-NCR between the E71 H (HFMD) and the E71 BrCr (aseptic meningitis) viruses might provide a clue to explain why E71 was associated with two different clinical patterns: polio-like disease in the United States. Australia, and Eastern Europe, HFMD in China, Japan, and Singapore.

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