AAAR 32nd Annual Conference
September 30 - October 4, 2013
Oregon Convention Center
Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Infectivity and Survivability of Airborne Viruses Generated from Human Saliva, Artificial Saliva, and Cell Culture Media
ZHILI ZUO, Thomas Kuehn, Aschalew Bekele, Harsha Verma, Sagar Goyal, Peter Raynor, David Y. H. Pui, University of Minnesota
Abstract Number: 98 Working Group: Health Related Aerosols
Abstract Virus aerosols are raising more and more public concerns due to their potential involvement in disease transmission. To better understand the airborne transmission of viral diseases, many laboratory studies have been performed to study airborne viruses, which are often generated from virus suspensions using nebulizers. However, laboratory studies are sometimes criticized for generating virus aerosols from artificial nebulizer suspensions (e.g. cell culture media), which 1) does not mimic the natural release of virus from human saliva or respiratory mucus and 2) may alter the properties of airborne viruses. Therefore, it is unclear if results obtained using artificial nebulizer suspensions could represent the behavior of airborne viruses in real world situations.
The objectives of this laboratory study were to determine how human saliva affects the infectivity and survivability of airborne viruses and to compare the use of human saliva with artificial saliva and cell culture media. MS2 bacteriophage stock was diluted in the appropriate nebulizer suspension, aerosolized, size-selected (100-450 nm) using a differential mobility analyzer, and collected onto gelatin filters. Uranine dye was also nebulized with the virus, serving as a particle tracer. The resulting particle size distribution was determined using a scanning mobility particle sizer. The collected samples were analyzed by infectivity assays, quantitative PCR, and spectrofluorometry.
Compared with cell culture media, human saliva caused more inactivation of airborne MS2 bacteriophage. However, the level of inactivation was independent of particle size (200-450 nm). These preliminary results suggest that caution needs to be taken when extrapolating laboratory results to real life situations. Tests using artificial saliva and animal viruses are currently underway and results will help better understand disease transmission via virus aerosols.