The role of serological data to understand the emergence of outbreaks of enterovirus-related diseases

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Talk abstract:

Enteroviruses cause neurological and other illnesses. A few enterovirus serotypes have recently emerged as a novel cause of disease, resulting in drastically altered disease epidemiology. For example, since 2014, Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) has been responsible for outbreaks of acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), which causes paralysis mostly in children; and Coxsackievirus A6 (CVA6) has become the leading cause of hand-foot-and-mouth disease worldwide over the last ten years. The emergence of these two enterovirus serotypes as new causes of disease is a complex process that follows earlier, often largely asymptomatic circulation of the ancestral virus. Changes in virus transmissibility, antigenicity and pathogenicity could all be involved in the process of emergence of these outbreaks. In this talk, I will present recent work on the analysis of EV-D68 and CVA6 serological data to infer past changes in virus transmission and will discuss how these analyses contribute to our understanding of the emergence of these two novel pathogens.