AAAR 33rd Annual Conference
October 20 - October 24, 2014
Rosen Shingle Creek
Orlando, Florida, USA
Abstract View
Efficiency of Virus Collection with the Novel G-II Bioaerosol Collector
Jovan Pantelic, Michael Grantham, JING YAN, Fengjie Liu, Sheryl Ehrman, Donald Milton, University of Maryland School of Public Health
Abstract Number: 356 Working Group: Bioaerosols
Abstract The use of an SKC biosampler (R)(SKC Inc, Eighty Four,PA) has been reported to maintain high infectivity of collected virus, but it does not meet our requirement for operating at high flow rates (≥ 130lpm). A new sampler, called the Gesundheit II (GII) was designed and built to be used to collect expiratory droplets samples from influenza infected subjects. In our study, we established the optimal G-II operating parameters and also characterized the biological collection efficiency and the maintenance of virus infectivity for four Influenza viruses by comparing GII with a commercially sampler, the SKC biosampler. We aerosolized four Influenza viruses (A/California/04/2009, A/Puerto Rico/08/1934, A/Udorn/1972 and B/Lee/1940) using a six-jet collision nebulizer and released in the G-II cone for 10 minutes. We picked these four viruses because of their different shape variance. The G-II was operated under optimized conditions with physical collection efficiency above 90%. 10 X PBS with 1% BSA was injected at the rate of 25 mL/h into the reservoir as a buffer. After 10 min aerosolization was stopped and condensate was collected from the reservoir. Experiments were repeated 3 times for each virus. The reservoir of the SKC biosampler was filled with 20ml of virus buffer (1X PBS with 0.1% BSA) prior to sampling. Samples were analyzed for infectivity using fluorescent focus assays and the total influenza virus particle number was determined using reverse transcriptase quantitative PCR. The GII collected 77%±0.06, 85%±0.27, 91%±0.15, and 117%±0.17 of the virus collected by the biosampler respectively. From the experiments results, the GII can sample several types of Influenza viruses and it can be efficiently used for collection of human expiratory droplets samples during the Influenza outbreaks.