Effect of temperature on the survival of hepatitis A virus and its capsidal antigen in synthetic seawater
Abstract
The aim of this work is to study the variation of the infectious titer and the hepatitis A virus (HAV) antigen titer at 4, 19, and 25°C following artificial contamination in sterile seawater. The results show that the survival of infectious HAV depends greatly on the temperature parameter. The T90 are 11 days at 25°C and 24 days at 19°C, and the infectious titer remains stable at 4°C throughout the 92 day duration of the experiment. The capsidal antigen is found to survive much longer in seawater than the infectious virus. Indeed the T90 was estimated to be 19 times greater at 19°C and 7 times greater at 25°C for the capsidal antigen. The capsidal antigen constitutes a marker that allows detection of the presence of HAV in seawater, although it has very low sensitivity and does not provide any information on the infectious characteristics of the virus. Indeed at 19 and 25°C the antigen survives much longer than the infectious virus. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Environ Toxicol Water Qual 13: 89–92, 1998