Enterovirus infection in Korean children and anti-enteroviral potential candidate agents.

Although most enterovirus infections are not serious enough to be life threatening, several enteroviruses such as enterovirus 71 are responsible for severe, potentially life-threatening disease. The epidemic patterns of enteroviruses occur regularly during the year, but they may change due to environmental shifts induced by climate change due to global warming. Therefore, enterovirus epidemiological studies should be performed continuously as a basis for anti-viral studies. A great number of synthesized antiviral compounds that work against enteroviruses have been developed but only a few have demonstrated effectiveness in vivo. No proven effective antiviral agents are available for enterovirus disease therapy. The development of a new antiviral drug is a difficult task due to poor selective toxicity and cost. To overcome these limitations, one approach is to accelerate the availability of other existing antiviral drugs approved for antiviral effect against enteroviruses, and the other way is to screen traditional medicinal plants.