Lack of Association between New Haven Coronavirus and Kawasaki Disease

To the Editor—The new human coronavirus NL63 (HCoV-NL63) was discovered by van der Hoek et al. [1] and Fouchier et al. [2]. HCoV-NL63 has been shown to cause respiratory tract disease in young children [3, 4]. Esper et al. have reported a novel HCoV designated the “New Haven coronavirus” (HCoV-NH) that has been shown by sequence analysis to be very similar to HCoV-NL63 [5]. Esper et al. also reported that HCoV-NH was detected by reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in 8 (72.7%) of 11 respiratory tract samples from children with Kawasaki disease (KD) and in 1 (4.5%) of 22 age-matched samples from control subjects [6]. On the basis of these data, they suggested that HCoV-NH infection was associated with KD. To further investigate whether HCoV-NH disease is associated with KD, we performed a retrospective study

From October 2002 to May 2003, 19 nasopharyngeal swab samples were collected from 19 children who fulfilled the criteria for KD and who were treated at Tenshi Hospital in Sapporo, Japan. All of the samples were collected after informed consent was obtained from the children’s parents. All of the samples were obtained within 7 days of the onset of illness. The mean age of the children with KD was 22.6 months (range, 4 months–5 years). We used as controls 208 nasopharyngeal swab samples that were collected from children with diagnoses of respiratory tract disease who were admitted to hospitals in Sapporo, Japan, during the same period. All of these samples were examined after the possibility of infection with human respiratory syncytial virus or influenza A or B was excluded by rapid antigen-detection tests. The mean age of the children with respiratory tract disease was 21.6 months (range, 4 months–5 years). After extraction of total RNA and synthesis of cDNA, we performed RT-PCR to detect the HCoV-NH genome, as described by Esper et al. [6]. The primer set and the PCR conditions in our PCR assay were the same as those used in their PCR assays. Sequencing of the PCR products was also performed to confirm the presence of HCoV-NH

Although RNA sequences of HCoV-NH were detected in samples from 5 (2.4%) of the 208 control children with respiratory tract disease, we could not detect any RNA sequences of HCoV-NH in 19 samples from children with KD (table 1). On the basis of these data, we have some reservations about the findings described by Esper et al. [6]. They collected respiratory tract swab samples from children with KD as part of an ongoing epidemiological investigation of respiratory tract viruses. We collected respiratory tract swab samples from all of the patients with KD, regardless of the presence of respiratory tract symptoms, who were treated at Tenshi Hospital from October 2002 to May 2003. Because no RNA sequences of HCoV-NH were detected in samples from 19 patients with KD in our study, there is a possibility that Esper et al. tested samples from patients with KD who had respiratory tract symptoms. Our results suggest that Esper et al.’s results may be coincidental and that HCoV-NH does not play a dominant role in the etiology or pathogenesis of KD in Japan

Table 1.

Detection of New Haven coronavirus (HCoV-NH) in children with Kawasaki disease (KD) and in children with respiratory tract disease (RTDs)