Key result
Pretreatment with a viability dye (reagent D) followed by RT-qPCR reduced the detection of noninfectious enteric viruses more efficiently than RNase, though discrimination was incomplete.
Surfactant/RD-RT-qPCR may be an advantageous tool for better detection of infectious enteric viruses, improving public health risk assessment.
Viability RT-qPCR pretreatments may aid infectivity assessment in food/water samples; leaves open replacement of cell culture for routine enteric virus surveillance.
AIM: To assess the potential of a viability dye and an enzymatic reverse transcription quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) pretreatment to discriminate between infectious and noninfectious enteric viruses. METHODS AND RESULTS: Enterovirus (EntV), norovirus (NoV) GII.4 and hepatitis A virus (HAV) were inactivated at 95°C for 10 min, and four methods were used to compare the efficiency of inactivation: (i) cell culture plaque assay for HAV and EntV, (ii) RT-qPCR alone, (iii) RT-qPCR assay preceded by RNase treatment, and (iv) pretreatment with a viability dye (reagent D (RD)) followed by RT-qPCR. In addition, heat-inactivated NoV was treated with RD coupled with surfactants to increase the efficiency of the viability dye. No treatment was able to completely discriminate infectious from noninfectious viruses. RD-RT-qPCR reduced more efficiently the detection of noninfectious viruses with little to no removal observed with RNase. RD-RT-qPCR method was the closest to cell culture assay. The combination of surfactants and RD did not show relevant improvements on the removal of inactivated viruses signal compared with viability RT-qPCR, with the exception of Triton X-100. CONCLUSION: The use of surfactant/RD-RT-qPCR, although not being able to completely remove the signal from noninfectious viral particles, yielded a better estimation of viral infectivity. SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF THE STUDY: Surfactant/RD-RT-qPCR may be an advantageous tool for a better detection of infectious viruses with potential significant impact in the risk assessment of the presence of enteric viruses.
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Monteiro et al. (2017) studied Enteric viruses (Enterovirus, Norovirus, Hepatitis A virus). Viability dye (reagent D) and enzymatic RT-qPCR pretreatment vs. RT-qPCR alone, RT-qPCR with RNase, cell culture plaque assay was evaluated on Discrimination between infectious and noninfectious enteric viruses. Pretreatment with a viability dye (reagent D) followed by RT-qPCR reduced the detection of noninfectious enteric viruses more efficiently than RNase, though discrimination was incomplete.
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