Survival of influenza A virus on contaminated student clothing.

Keiko Ikeda,Kazuko Tsujimoto,Yukiko Suzuki,Augustine Hajime Koyama

doi:10.3892/etm.2015.2278

Abstract

The role of contaminated clothing in the transmission of influenza A virus during an epidemic period was investigated by examining the recovery of infectious influenza virus from experimentally virus-contaminated clothing, which had been subejected to routine wearing and washing for several months or years. The amount of infectious virus recovered from the nine types of clothing decreased with time and was shown to differ widely between clothing samples, when the contaminated clothing samples were maintained in uncovered glass Petri dishes in a safety cabinet under air blowing. These results indicate a dependence of virus transmissibility on the nature of the contaminated clothes. The difference in recovery was shown to have no significant correlation with the thickness or the materials of the clothing; however, a correlation was observed with the residual amount of water in the deposited virus preparation on the test clothing.

Highlights

During the course of studies investigating the effects of natural products on the infectivity of viruses [1,2,3,4,5,6], the survival of viruses outside of the infected cells has been found to be strongly affected by environmental factors, indicating a role of the environment in virus transmission
At the indicated time points after virus deposition, one piece of the contaminated cloth was transferred into a glass test tube, immediately followed by the addition of 1,000 μl ice‐cold Dulbecco's phosphate‐buffered saline (PBS) without Ca2+ and Mg2+, but containing 0.1% bovine serum albumin (BSA)
The potential risk of indirect transmission through the contact of hands with virus‐contaminated surfaces has been increasingly emphasized as a cause of the pandemic spread of influenza A virus, in addition to the classical direct transmission by droplets from the infected individuals [7,8]

Summary

Introduction

During the course of studies investigating the effects of natural products on the infectivity of viruses [1,2,3,4,5,6], the survival of viruses outside of the infected cells has been found to be strongly affected by environmental factors, indicating a role of the environment in virus transmission. Droplet‐borne infection is considered to be the major route for influenza virus transmission [9], the role of transmission via the contact route has been emphasized [7,8] This indirect transmission occurs primarily through hand contact with a virus‐contaminated surface around the infected individual. The viruses may be protected by the clothes from environmentally inactivating conditions In the latter case, the binding of the virus to the clothes must be reversible in order for transmission to occur. In this study, the hospital gowns were contaminated with 0.5 ml virus preparation; the volume was too large to examine the role of the deposit of virus‐containing droplets in an actual environment. To examine the role of indirect transmission by the virus‐contaminated clothes in epidemics of influenza A virus, the present study quantitatively examined the viability and transmissibility of the virus from the contaminated surfaces of various types of clothing

Materials and methods

Results and Discussion

American Medical Association