Lack of Evidence of Retroviral Involvement in Kawasaki Disease

Abstract

To the Editor.— Microbes have long been suspected to be a causative agent of Kawasaki disease since the original report by Kawasaki.1 Yanagawa et al2 described an epidemic wave of Kawasaki disease spread from central Japan to the entire nation in 6 months. This strongly suggests that an infectious agent might be involved. Furthermore, recent studies by Shulman and Rowley3 and Burnes et al4 have independently demonstrated retrovirus-specific reverse transcriptase activities in the culture supernatants of peripheral mononuclear cells from US patients with Kawasaki disease.