Detection of Enterovirus D68 among Children with Severe Acute Respiratory Infection in Myanmar.

Background: Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) is an important reemerging pathogen that causes severe acute respiratory infection and acute flaccid paralysis, mainly in children. Since 2014, EV-D68 outbreaks have been reported in the United States, Europe, and east Asia; however, no outbreaks have been reported in southeast Asian countries, including Myanmar, during the previous 10 years. Methods: EV-D68 was detected in nasopharyngeal swabs from children with acute lower respiratory infections in Myanmar. The samples were previously collected from children aged 1 month to 12 years who had been admitted to the Yankin Children Hospital in Yangon, Myanmar, between May 2017 and January 2019. EV-D68 was detected with a newly developed EV-D68 -specific real-time PCR assay. The clade was identified by using a phylogenetic tree created with the Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo method. Results: During the study period, nasopharyngeal samples were collected from 570 patients. EV-D68 was detected in 42 samples (7.4 %)-11 samples from 2017 to 31 samples from 2018. The phylogenetic tree revealed that all strains belonged to clade B3, which has been the domi- nant clade worldwide since 2014. We estimate that ancestors of currently circulating geno- types emerged during the period 1980-2004. Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first report of EV-D68 detection in children with acute lower respiratory infections in Yangon, Myanmar, in 2017-2018. Detection and detailed virologic analyses of EV-D68 in southeast Asia is an important aspect of worldwide surveillance and will likely be useful in better understanding the worldwide epidemiologic profile of EV-D68 infection. Copyright 2024, Taiwan Society of Microbiology. Published by Elsevier Taiwan LLC. This is an open access article under the CC BY -NC -ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc-nd/4.0/).