Discrimination of infectious hepatitis A virus and rotavirus by combining dyes and surfactants with RT-qPCR

Abstract : Background: Human enteric viruses are major agents of foodborne diseases. Because of the absence of a reliable cell culture method for most of the enteric viruses involved in outbreaks, real-time reverse transcriptase PCR is now widely used for the detection of RNA viruses in food samples. However this approach detects viral nucleic acids of both infectious and non infectious viruses, which limits the impact of conclusions with regard to public health concern. The aim of the study was to develop a method to discriminate between infectious and non-infectious particles of hepatitis A virus (HAV) and two strains of rotavirus (RV) following thermal inactivation by using intercalating dyes combined with RT-qPCR.