AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Comparison of Aerosol Samplers for Measurement of Yersinia pestis in Aerosols
GREGORY WILLIAMS, Stewart Wood, Sierra Gardner, Melissa Krause, Shanna Ratnesar-Shumate, BNBI / DHS NBACC
Abstract Number: 8 Working Group: Bioaerosols
Abstract Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of plague, has caused intermittent outbreaks amongst human populations for over a thousand years. One of the most recent outbreaks occurred in Madagascar from August through November 2017, in which a total of 2,348 confirmed cases and 202 deaths were reported. Of these cases, 1,791 were reported as pneumonic plague, a form of the disease that can result from human-to-human respiratory transmission. Currently, few data exist on the risk of aerosol transmission of plague. To begin to examine respiratory transmissibility of plague, an aerosol sampling device that maximizes recovery of viable or culturable Y. pestis needs to be identified. The efficiency of a sampler can vary across different microorganisms, potentially introducing a bias that may lead to underestimation of the presence of viable microorganisms in an aerosol. In the present study, the effect of aerodynamic particle size and aerosol sampler type on the sampling efficiency of Y. pestis was investigated. The results of this study demonstrated that liquid impingement techniques provide significantly greater recovery of viable/culturable Y. pestis relative to gelatin filters and dry cyclone samplers. Thus, liquid impingement would be recommended as the preferred method in future studies examining the potential for respiratory transmission of Y. pestis in an aerosol.
The National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC) is a Department of Homeland Security federal laboratory (DHS) sponsored by the DHS Science and Technology Directorate and operated by the Battelle National Biodefense Institute. This work was funded under Contract No. HSHQDC-15-C-00064, awarded by the DHS S&T to NBACC. The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted to represent policies, expressed or implied, of the DHS or S&T.