Concentration of enteric viruses in large volumes of water using a cartridge-type mixed cellulose ester membrane

Food Environ Virol. 2015 Mar;7(1):7-13. doi: 10.1007/s12560-014-9169-x. Epub 2014 Oct 18.

Abstract

A viral adsorption-elution method using a flat/disk-type electronegative membrane (diameter of 47-90 mm) has been widely utilized to concentrate viruses in relatively small volumes of water (up to 10 L) due to limited filtration area. In the present study, we aimed to develop a virus concentration method that is based on the same principle and yet allows concentration of large volumes of water using a cartridge-type electronegative membrane. We modified two electronegative membrane-based methods for this purpose (i.e., Mg(2+) method and Al(3+) method) and determined recovery efficiencies of poliovirus and murine norovirus inoculated in water samples. The virus recovery efficiency of the Al(3+) method substantially decreased as the volume of water sample increased. In contrast, Mg(2+) method showed stable virus recovery efficiencies (10-54 %) even when 40 to 1,000 L of river and tap water samples were processed. The volume of the concentrate (400 mL) can be further reduced to 1.5 mL by a Centricon plus-70 centrifugal ultrafiltration device with overall recovery efficiencies of 8.8-16 %. Our results demonstrated that the newly developed virus concentration method enables detection of as low as 10(1) copies/L of viruses in water samples.

Publication types

  • Evaluation Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adsorption
  • Cellulose / analogs & derivatives
  • Cellulose / chemistry
  • Enterovirus / chemistry
  • Enterovirus / isolation & purification*
  • Filtration / instrumentation
  • Filtration / methods*
  • Fresh Water / chemistry
  • Fresh Water / virology*
  • Rivers / chemistry
  • Rivers / virology*

Substances

  • cellulose ester plastic
  • Cellulose