Epidemiological and etiological characteristics of hand foot and mouth disease cluster in a kindergarten in Beijing, 2010

Objective To understand the epidemiological and etiological characteristics of hand foot and mouth disease cluster in a kindergarten in Beijing in 2010. Methods Epidemiological survey was carried out to identify the infection source, the descriptive epidemiological analysis was conducted on the incidence data and real-time RT-PCR was performed to detect EV71 and Cox A16. RD cells were used to isolate virus strains. The homogeneity of isolated strains were analyzed. Results Six cases were reported during the outbreak lasting for 7 days, the attack rate was 31.6%. The first case was a contact of hand foot and mouth disease patient. Other cases had close contact with children who suffered from the disease. Four cases (66.7%) had the symptom of fever and developed vesicular exanthema on their mouth, food, hand and buttock. Two severe cases showed the symptom of encephalitis and pneumonia. Two EV71 virus strains were isolated from 6 positive samples. The nucleotide homogeneity of VP1 of these 2 strains with Beijing strains during 2006-2010 was 94.6%-100.0%. Conclusion The hand foot and mouth disease cluster was caused by EV71 which had high homology with the isolated strains in Beijing during 2006-2010. It is necessary to strengthen health education and improve the community's capacity to find and report communicable disease cluster.