Nucleotide sequences and mutations of the 5'-nontranslated region (5'NTR) of natural isolates of an epidemic echovirus 11' (prime)

An echovirus 11' (prime) virus caused an epidemic in Hungary in 1989. The leading clinical form of the diseases was myocarditis. Hemorrhagic hepatitis syndroms were also caused, however, with lethal outcome in 13 newborn babies. Altogether 386 children suffered from registered clinical disease. No accumulation of serous meningitis cases and intrauterine death were observed during the epidemic, and the monovalent oral poliovirus vaccination campaign has prevented the further circulation of the virus. The 5'-nontranslated region (5'-NTR) of 12 natural isolates were sequenced (nucleotides: 260-577). The 5'-NTR was found to be different from that of the prototype Gregory strain (X80059) of EV11 (less than 90% identity), but related to the swine vesicular disease virus (D16364) SVDV and EV9 (X92886) as indicated by the best fitting dendogram. The examination of the variable nucleotides in the internal ribosomal entry site (IRES) revealed, that the nucleotide sequence of a region of the epidemic 5'-NTR was identical to that of coxsackievirus B2. Five of the epidemic isolates were found to carry mutations. Seven EV11' IRES elements possessed identical sequences indicating, that the virus has evolved before its arrival to Hungary. The comparative examination of the suboptimal secondary structures revealed, that no one of the mutations affected the secondary structure of stem-loop structures IV and V in the IRES elements. Although it has been shown previously, that the echovirus group is genetically coherent and related to coxsackie B viruses the sequence differences in the epidemic isolates resulted in profound modification of the central stem (residues 477-529) of stem-loop structure No.V known to be affecting neurovirulence of polioviruses. Two alternate cloverleaf (stem-loop) structures were also recognised (nucleotides 376 to 460 and 540 to 565) which seem to mask both regions of the IRES element complementary to the 3'-end of the 18 S rRNA (460 to 466 and 561 to 570), thus probably diminishing initiation of translation. The possible biological importance of the alternative cloverleaf structures is supported by the fact that neither the 17 variable nucleotides nor the two mutations of epidemic isolates within the regions seem to modify the predicted alternative secondary structures in EV11, SVDV and CBV1-4.