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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, July 2003, p. 3965-3969, Vol. 69, No. 7
0099-2240/03/$08.00+0     DOI: 10.1128/AEM.69.7.3965-3969.2003
Copyright © 2003, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Presence of Viral Genomes in Mineral Water: a Sufficient Condition To Assume Infectious Risk?

Benoît Gassilloud, Louis Schwartzbrod, and Christophe Gantzer*

Laboratoire de Chimie Physique et Microbiologie pour l'Environnement, Faculté de Pharmacie, UMR 7564 CNRS/Université Henri Poincaré-Nancy I, 54 001 Nancy, France

Received 13 November 2002/ Accepted 31 March 2003

Appropriate interpretation of a positive reverse transcription-PCR is an important issue for virus-related health hazard assessment because viral genomes and infectious viruses exhibit different behavior patterns in water. In this context, using Poliovirus 1 and Feline calicivirus f9 as examples of enteric viruses, first we demonstrated that the stability of infectious viruses is greatly affected by the temperature of mineral water (10, 20, and 35°C) and that, in contrast, temperature has little effect on the corresponding genomes. Second, we demonstrated that infectious particles are degraded more rapidly than viral genomes at all temperatures studied. At 35°C, Poliovirus 1 infectivity was reduced 4 logs after only 19 days, while an equivalent reduction would have taken 75 years (according to the model applied) for the viral genome. Contradictory conclusions can also be drawn concerning the sensitivity of viral serotypes depending on whether the infectious virus or the viral genome is considered. The Feline calicivirus f9 genome is more resistant than the Poliovirus 1 genome, whereas the opposite is true for the corresponding infectious viruses. Thus, we concluded that a positive test for a viral genome in mineral water must be interpreted with utmost caution because of the lack of a correlation between the presence of viral genomes and viral infectivity. Detection of viral genomes may be necessary to identify infectious risk for the human population, but it cannot be considered sufficient.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: LCPME, Faculté de Pharmacie, 5 rue Albert Lebrun, 54 001 Nancy, France. Phone: 33 03 83 68 22 94. Fax: 33 03 83 68 23 01. E-mail: christophe.gantzer{at}pharma.uhp-nancy.fr.

Applied and Environmental Microbiology, July 2003, p. 3965-3969, Vol. 69, No. 7
0099-2240/03/$08.00+0     DOI: 10.1128/AEM.69.7.3965-3969.2003
Copyright © 2003, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



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