To assess the quality of shellfish harvest areas, bivalve mollusk samples from three coastal areas of the Campania region in Southwest Italy were evaluated for viruses over a three-year period (2015-2017). Screening of 289 samples from shellfish farms and other locations by qPCR and RT-qPCR identified hepatitis A virus (HAV; 8.9%), norovirus GI (NoVGI; 10.8%) and GII (NoVGII; 39.7%), rotavirus (RV; 9.0%), astrovirus (AsV; 20.8%), sapovirus (SaV; 18.8%), aichivirus-1 (AiV-1; 5.6%), and adenovirus (AdV, 5.6%). Hepatitis E virus (HEV) was never detected. Sequence analysis identified HAV as genotype IA and AdV as type 41. This study demonstrates the presence of different enteric viruses within bivalve mollusks, highlighting the limitations of the current EU classification system for shellfish growing waters.
Keywords: HAV; enteric viruses; molecular methods; mollusks.