Evaluation of air samplers and filter materials for collection and recovery of airborne norovirus

Abstract

Aims The aim of this study was to identify the most efficient sampling method for quantitative PCR‐based detection of airborne human norovirus (NoV). Methods and Results A comparative experiment was conducted in an aerosol chamber using aerosolized murine norovirus (MNV) as a surrogate for NoV. Sampling was performed using a nylon (NY) filter in conjunction with four kinds of personal samplers: Gesamtstaubprobenahme sampler (GSP), Triplex‐cyclone sampler (TC), 3‐piece closed‐faced Millipore cassette (3P) and a 2‐stage NIOSH cyclone sampler (NIO). In addition, sampling was performed using the GSP sampler with four different filter types: NY, polycarbonate (PC), polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and gelatine (GEL). The sampling efficiency of MNV was significantly influenced by both sampler and filter type. The GSP sampler was found to give significantly (P < 0·05) higher recovery of aerosolized MNV than 3P and NIO. A higher recovery was also found for GSP compared with TC, albeit not significantly. Finally, recovery of aerosolized MNV was significantly (P < 0·05) higher using NY than PC, PTFE and GEL filters. Conclusions The GSP sampler combined with a nylon filter was found to be the best method for personal filter‐based sampling of airborne NoV. Significance and Impact of the Study The identification of a suitable NoV air sampler is an important step towards studying the association between exposure to airborne NoV and infection.

Development and Validation of a Simple Bioaerosol Collection Filter System Using a Conventional Vacuum Cleaner for Sampling

“…Obviously, presented results are valid for the sampling settings chosen in this study, different sampling durations or airflow rates might lead to diverging correlations, since sampling settings are crucial for the overall performance of bioaerosol samplers (Grinshpun et al 2007;Han et al 2015;Uhrbrand et al 2017). Although a broad range of environmental conditions, including different seasons, indoor sampling sites with high, respectively, low fungal particle levels and outdoor reference measurements were covered within this experimental setup, further studies at different sampling sites are needed to verify these finding.…”

Challenges and Perspectives for Biosensing of Bioaerosol Containing Pathogenic Microorganisms

“…Molecular biological detection methods have made considerable progress over the past decades [ 81 , 82 ]. PCR is the representative method for molecular biological detection, which is able to quantitatively and specifically detect various pathogens in the bioaerosols [ 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 , 88 , 89 ]. After the bioaerosols were collected and lysed to release the nucleic acids from target microorganisms, the nucleic acids were denatured, annealed, and extended to achieve their amplification.…”

Design and Validation with Influenza A Virus of an Aerosol Transmission Chamber for Ferrets

“…The evidence of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) airborne transmission was first assessed by indirect evidences such as modeling and epidemiological studies [2]. Moreover, the possible airborne transmission of non-respiratory diseases, like Norovirus, is a subject of investigation [3,4,5].…”