Cooperative Study of Methods for the Recovery of Enteric Viruses from Shellfish

Ten investigators actively involved in shellfish virology agreed to participate in a methods study. Each participant was given the freedom of choice as to method and cell cultures used. Considerable variation was noted in the number of viruses recovered from six 100-g representative samples. All the methods appeared to detect polioviruses but difficulty was encountered in detecting low levels of coxsackie-viruses and echoviruses. The glasswool filtration-hydroextraction method and modifications of the Sobsey method were the most effective techniques for detecting and quantitating virus in this study.