First Occurrence of Saffold Virus in Sewage and River Water Samples in Karaj, Iran

AbstractSaffold virus as a newly discovered virus, which seems to be related to acute gastroenteritis as with other enteric viruses and to human airway diseases in children belongs toCardiovirus genus inpicornaviridae family with 11 genotypes. Saffold virus initially was detected in America from infant stool sample. Saffold virus has also been detected in environmental water samples. Until now, two reports have demonstrated that sewage water sources are contaminated with Saffold viruses. Molecular detection of Saffold virus mostly depended on reverse transcription PCR methods and RT-qPCR, which had targeted 5 ′UTR region of the viral genome. The present study aims to evaluate the molecular detection and quantity of Saffold virus in sewage water and river water specimens by RT-qPCR assay in Karaj, Iran. Fifty samples collected from environmental waters containing treated and untreated sewage water and r iver water samples were included in this study. After viral RNA extraction, the Real-time PCR was developed to amplify the 5′UTR sequence of Saffold virus genome and viral load was assessed. Out of the 50 samples tested (consisting 28 river water samples and 22 sewage water samples), the Saffold v irus genomic RNA was identified in 10/28 (35.7%) of river water samples and in 4/12 (33.3%) of treated and 4/10 (40%) of untreated sewage samples. The maximum viral load was 6.8 × 106 copies/l in untreated sewage water sample in December, and the lower viral load was 1.2  Ã...
Source: Food and Environmental Virology - Category: Virology Source Type: research