Centers for Disease Control. Enteroviral disease in the United States, 1970-1979.

The enteroviruses consist of five different groups and a total of 67 different agents: group A coxsackieviruses (23 agents), group B coxsackieviruses (six agents), echoviruses (31 agents), polioviruses (three agents), and the newer enterovirus types 68-71 (four agents). The individual agents share certain clinical and epidemiologic characteristics; all of them can cause a wide range of clinical manifestations [1-13]. Many of the agents have been etiologically associated with respiratory diseases, rash illnesses, and nonspecific fevers. Viruses from nearly all of these groups may also infect the central nervous system, causing paralysis, encephalitis, and/or meningitis. Coxsackieviruses, especially coxsackieviruses B1B5, have long been known to cause myocarditis and pericarditis [1, 3, 12, 14-32]. Most enteroviral infections, however, are asymptomatic [1, 2, 28, 33, 34], a key factor in understanding the epidemiology of these agents. Enterovirus surveillance data from the United States for 1970-1979 are presented in this report. Despite the lack of complete reporting, the surveillance system has provided a broad data base for an epidemiologic analysis of enteroviral infections reported in the United States during the past decade.