Evaluation of three different concentration and extraction methods for recovery efficiency of human adenovirus and human rotavirus virus A

Routine wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) effluents monitoring is essential because of enteric viruses' low infectious dose beyond molecular detectability. In current study methods for concentration and extraction, intermethod compatibility and recovery efficiency of spiked human adenovirus (HAdV) and human rotavirus A (RVA) were evaluated. For virus concentration, polyethylene glycol precipitation (PEG), charged membrane-based adsorption/elution (CMAE), and glass wool-based concentration (GW) methods were used. Nucleic acid was extracted by PowerViralTM Environmental RNA/DNA Isolation (POW), ZymoBIOMICSTM RNA extraction (ZYMO) and Wizard (R) Genomic DNA Purification (WGDP) and samples were analyzed by Real-Time PCR. CMAE method yielded significantly higher concentrations for both ARQ (Armored-RNA Quant) and RVA compared to PEG (P = 0.001 and 0.003) and GW (P < 0.0001). Highest HAdV concentration was obtained by PEG (P = 0.001 and < 0.0001) in relation to CMAE and GW. ZYMO yielded a significantly higher ARQ and RVA concentrations (P = 0.03 and 0.0057), whereas significantly higher concentration was obtained by POW for HAdV (P = 0.032). CMAE x ZYMO achieved the highest recovery efficiencies for ARQ (69.77 %) and RVA (64.25, respectively, while PEG x POW present efficiency of 9.7 % for HAdV. These findings provide guidance for understanding of method-related biases for viral recovery efficiency.

Automated summary

This study evaluated different methods in monitoring effluents from wastewater treatment plants and found the impact of different methods on the recovery efficiency and extraction efficiency, providing guidance for understanding method-related biases.