Outbreaks of Enterovirus 71 Infection

To the Editor: The outbreak of enterovirus 71 infection in Taiwan, reported by Ho et al. (Sept. 23 issue), 1 occurred almost a year after the outbreak in Malaysia. Though both outbreaks occurred in Asia and both involved large numbers of deaths, it was not known whether the two outbreaks were related. We studied the nucleotide sequence and secondary RNA structure of some of the isolates, using the sequence of the 5' untranslated region (UTR). Enterovirus 71 isolates from patients in Singapore (seven isolates), Taiwan (two isolates), and Japan (one isolate) were examined and compared with those previously reported in Malaysia . . .