Monitoring of Airborne Mumps and Measles Viruses in a Hospital

Abstract

A new personal bioaerosol sampler, which was found suitable for continuous long-term (up to 8 h) monitoring of airborne bacteria, fungi, and viruses, was recently developed. A range of investigations under controlled laboratory conditions verified the performance of the device for both stress sensitive and robust viral particles. To decrease the detection time, the next step of the technique development was related to utilization of the sampler in combination with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology in the laboratory. The combined device was found to be fully feasible with the corresponding decrease of the detection time from a few days to 2.5 h. In addition, the results for targeted microorganisms were not affected by background biological particles and cross-reaction was not observed. The current study is the first trial to use the new combined device, i.e., sampler-conventional PCR device, for monitoring airborne viruses in the field. The monitoring procedures were performed in hospital infection wards with patients Suffering from mumps and measles diseases to detect the corresponding disease causing viruses in the ambient air. The results for the existence of the airborne viruses were obtained for both strains. A simple procedure is also suggested for enumeration of microbial contamination in the ambient air.