Diagnosis of human parechovirus infections of the central nervous system with a commercial real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction kit and direct genotyping of cerebrospinal fluid specimens.

We screened 100 cerebrospinal fluid specimens for the human parechoviruses (HPeV) genome with the commercial parechovirus r-gene™ kit, which allows results to be available in a clinically relevant time frame. HPeV infection was diagnosed in 4 infants (<4 months) and all genotyped viruses were HPeV3.