Astrovirus survival in drinking water

Abstract

A method based on infection of CaCo-2 cultured cell monolayers (CC) and reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) was developed for the specific detection of infectious astrovirus. The procedure was validated by titrating poliovirus stocks in parallel in CaCo-2 cells by determining the most probable number of cytopathogenic units and by cell culture and subsequent RT-PCR (CC-RT-PCR). CC-RT-PCR was then employed to measure the persistence of astrovirus suspended in dechlorinated tap water. After 60 days, the decay of astrovirus infectivity was 2 log units at 4 ؎ 1°C and 3.2 log units at 20 ؎ 1°C, while after 90 days, the titer reduction was 3.3 and 5 log units at 4 ؎ 1°C and 20 ؎ 1°C, respectively. Astrovirus decay in the presence of free chlorine (FC) was monitored by CC-RT-PCR. Residual infectivity was found after 2 h in the presence of 1 mg of FC/liter. Under these conditions, astrovirus shows a log titer reduction (LTR) of 4, while 0.5 mg of FC/liter induced an LTR of 2.4. The possibility of acquiring data on the survival of fastidious viruses in the environment opens new perspectives on the epidemiology of some significant infections transmitted by the fecal-oral route.

Methods to detect infectious human enteric viruses in environmental water samples

“…Using ICC-PCR, the presence of infectious EV was confirmed as early as 1 day post-inoculation in comparison to 3 days or more by traditional cell culture infectivity assay (Murrin and Slade, 1997;Reynolds et al, 1996). The use of ICC-PCR/ICC-qPCR has been described for the detection of a wide variety of human pathogenic viruses in aquatic environment such as enteroviruses, adenoviruses, rotaviruses, hepatitis A virus, astroviruses and reoviruses (Abad et al, 1997;Balkin and Margolin, 2010;Ballester et al, 2005;Blackmer et al, 2000;Chapron et al, 2000;Grimm et al, 2004;Hamza et al, 2011;Jiang et al, 2004;Lee et al, 2005;Li et al, 2010a;Reynolds, 2004;Rigotto et al, 2010;Shieh et al, 2008;Spinner and Di Giovanni, 2001).…”

Astroviruses in Dogs

“…In the 2 animals, virus shedding (up to 10 7 to 10 8 copies of genome equivalents/gr of feces) was correlated with clinical signs, with the disease being severer and virus shedding being more prolonged (more than 1 month) in the young pup (Martella and colleagues, unpublished information, 2011). Prolonged virus shedding after acute infection and resistance in the environments 35,36 could be factors facilitating virus diffusion in susceptible population. Fig.…”

Seroprevalence of antibodies to astrovirus in chickens in Grenada, West Indies

“…To prove the association between infection and clinical disease, more detailed study is needed. Astroviruses are very resistant in the environment and resist inactivation by most routinely used disinfectants [23][24][25]. According to Schultz-Cherry et al [25], the only products completely effective at inactivation were 0.3% formaldehyde, 1.5% Virkon S, 0.1% b-propiolactone, and 90% methanol.…”