Use of ionic detergents for enterovirus recovery from waste water

Virus recovery from poliovirus-seeded waste water was attempted after treatment of the samples with ionic detergents in the presence of acoustic energy. Viral titers strongly fluctuated depending upon concentration and chemical structure of the detergent as well as upon the dissolved organic content of the aqueous samples. Supplementation of the cellular monolayers with an additional amount of cell culture medium or with a nonionic detergent in a subcytotoxic concentration 48 h after inoculation partly induced cytopathic effects in silent dilution steps. Since, in the presence of the same detergent, viral recovery rates varied with the type of waste water, titer-conditioning activity of detergents was suggested to depend upon their effective critical micellization concentration. Especially for virus recovery from concentrated waste water, treatment with strongly disruptive detergents such as sodium dodecylsulfate revealed to be much more efficient than with the less hydrophilic sodium N-laurylsarcosine, sodium glycodeoxycholate or lauryldimethylamine-oxide, whereas the opposite seemed to be the case if virus recovery from filtrate samples were to be optimized. The mechanisms by which viral particles become infectious for the cell appear to be triggered by general principles of equilibrium thermodynamics, which means that interactions between viral surface proteins and cellular receptor molecules seem to reflect the tendency of these reagents to assume the energetically most favored orientation.