Evaluation of Glass Wool Filters and Hollow-Fiber Ultrafiltration Concentration Methods for qPCR Detection of Human Adenoviruses and Polyomaviruses in River Water

Pathogenic human viruses cause over half of gastroenteritis cases associated with recreational water use worldwide. They are difficult to concentrate from environmental waters due to low numbers and small sizes. Rapid enumeration of viruses by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) has the potential to improve water quality analysis and risk assessment. However, capturing and recovering these viruses from environmental water remain formidable barriers to routine use. Here, we compared the recovery efficiencies of human adenoviruses (HAdVs) and human polyomaviruses (HPyVs) from 10-L river water samples seeded with raw human wastewater (100 and 10 mL) using hollow-fiber ultrafiltration (HFUF) and glass wool filter (GWF) methods. The mean recovery efficiencies of HAdVs in river water samples through HFUF were 36 and 86 % for 100 and 10 mL of seeded human wastewater, respectively. In contrast, the estimated mean recovery efficiencies of HAdVs in river water samples through GWF were 1.3 and 3 % for 100 and 10 mL seeded raw human wastewater, respectively. Similar trends were also observed for HPyVs. Recovery efficiencies of HFUF method were significantly higher (P < 0.05) than GWF for both HAdVs and HPyVs. Our results clearly suggest that HFUF would be a preferred method for concentrating HAdVs and HPyVs from river water followed by subsequent detection and quantification with PCR/qPCR assays.