Environmental Persistence of Influenza Viruses Is Dependent upon Virus Type and Host Origin

TR Number
Date
2019-08-21
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Abstract

Highly transmissible influenza viruses (IV) must remain stable and infectious under a wide range of environmental conditions following release from the respiratory tract into the air. Understanding how expelled IV persist in the environment is critical to limiting the spread of these viruses. Little is known about how the stability of different IV in expelled aerosols is impacted by exposure to environmental stressors, such as relative humidity (RH). Given that not all IV are equally capable of efficient airborne transmission in people, we anticipated that not all IV would respond uniformly to ambient RH. Therefore, we have examined the stability of human-pathogenic seasonal and avian IV in suspended aerosols and stationary droplets under a range of RH conditions. H3N2 and influenza B virus (IBV) isolates are resistant to RH-dependent decay in aerosols in the presence of human airway surface liquid, but we observed strain-dependent variations in the longevities of H1N1, H3N2, and IBV in droplets. Surprisingly, low-pathogenicity avian influenza H6N1 and H9N2 viruses, which cause sporadic infections in humans but are unable to transmit person to person, demonstrated a trend toward increased sensitivity at midrange to high-range RH. Taken together, our observations suggest that the levels of vulnerability to decay at midrange RH differ with virus type and host origin.

Description
Keywords
aerosols, droplets, influenza virus, persistence, relative humidity
Citation