Detection of airborne rhinovirus and its relation to outdoor air supply in office environments.
Rhinoviruses are major causes of morbidity in patients with respiratory diseases; however, their modes of transmission are controversial. We investigated detection of airborne rhinovirus in office environments by polymerase chain reaction technology and related detection to outdoor air supply rates. We sampled air from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. each workday, with each sample run for 1 work week. We directly extracted RNA from the filters for nested reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction analysis of rhinovirus. Nasal lavage samples from building occupants with upper respiratory infections were also collected. Indoor carbon dioxide (CO2 concentrations were recorded every 10 minutes as a surrogate for outdoor air supply. To increase the range of CO2 concentrations, we adjusted the outdoor air supply rates every 3 months. Generalized additive models demonstrated an association between the probability of detecting airborne rhinovirus and a weekly average CO2 concentration greater than approximately 100 ppm, after controlling for covariates. In addition, one rhinovirus from a nasal lavage contained an identical nucleic acid sequence similar to that in the building air collected during the same week. These results suggest that occupants in buildings with low outdoor air supply may have an increased risk of exposure to infectious droplet nuclei emanating from a fellow building occupant.
Myatt
Theodore A
TA
Department of Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts 02115-6021, USA.
Johnston
Sebastian L
SL
Zuo
Zhengfa
Z
Wand
Matthew
M
Kebadze
Tatiana
T
Rudnick
Stephen
S
Milton
Donald K
DK
D000391:Air Microbiology; D016902:Air Pollution, Indoor / Q000009:adverse effects* / Q000032:analysis; D001900:Boston; D002245:Carbon Dioxide / Q000032:analysis; D045853:Exhalation; D006801:Humans; D019570:Inhalation Exposure / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000032:analysis; D009297:Nasal Mucosa / Q000821:virology; D010849:Picornaviridae / Q000302:isolation & purification; D010850:Picornaviridae Infections / Q000821:virology; D012141:Respiratory Tract Infections / Q000209:etiology* / Q000821:virology; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D012229:Rhinovirus / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D014691:Ventilation
D002245:Carbon Dioxide