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Appl. Environ. Microbiol., Aug 1997, 3119-3122, Vol 63, No. 8
FX Abad, RM Pinto, C Villena, R Gajardo and A Bosch
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 degrees C and
3.2 log units at 20 +/- 1 degrees C, while after 90 days, the titer
reduction was 3.3 and 5 log units at 4 +/- 1 degrees C and 20 +/- 1 degrees
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) or 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.
Copyright © 1997, American Society for Microbiology
Astrovirus survival in drinking water
Department of Microbiology, University of Barcelona, Spain.
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