Survival of hepatitis A virus and Aichi virus in cranberry-based juices at refrigeration (4 °C)

Abstract

Viral foodborne illness continues to be a health-concern globally, with numerous fruit and juice outbreaks of Hepatitis A virus (HAV) reported worldwide. Aichi virus (AiV) is an emerging pathogen with limited epidemiological data. Both, HAV and AiV are resistant to low pH and can survive under adverse environmental conditions leading to transmission ease. The objective of this study was to evaluate the survival of HAV and AiV in commercially-available cranberry-based juices (Cranberry juice cocktail, CJ and a 100% juice with cranberry, MJ) over 21 days at refrigeration (4 °C). Equal volumes of juice was mixed with each virus individually (final titer of 6 log PFU/mL) and stored at refrigeration over 21 days. At each time interval, the inoculated juices were serially diluted in cell culture media and infectious virus survival was determined by standard plaque assays. Each experiment was carried out in duplicate and replicated thrice. Reductions of 0.72 ± 0.06 (after day 1) to 2.3 ± 0.18 log PFU/mL (after day 21) and 0.63 ± 0.02 (after day 1) to 1.84 ± 0.14 log PFU/mL (after day 21) were obtained for AiV with MJ and CJ, respectively. Reductions ranging from 0.67 ± 0.03 (after day 1) to 1.09 ± 0.1 log PFU/mL (after day 21) and 0.93 ± 0.27 (after day1) to 1.49 ± 0.18 log PFU/mL (after day 21) were obtained for HAV at refrigeration in MJ and CJ, respectively. HAV showed greater survival than AiV in these juices over refrigerated storage. These results provide survival data of HAV and AiV in cranberry-based juices that can be used in risk-modeling and risk assessment studies.