Effectiveness of chitosan on the inactivation of enteric viral surrogates

Chitosan is known to have bactericidal and antifungal activity. Although human noroviruses are the leading cause of non-bacterial gastroenteritis, information on the efficacy of chitosan against foodborne viruses is very limited. The objective of this work was to determine the effectiveness of different molecular weight chitosans against the cultivable human norovirus and enteric virus surrogates, feline calicivirus, FCV-F9, murine norovirus, MNV-1, and bacteriophages, MS2 and phiX174. Five purified chitosans (53, 222, 307, 421, ∼1150 kDa) were dissolved in water, 1% acetic acid, or aqueous HCl pH = 4.3, sterilized by membrane filtration, and mixed with equal volume of virus to obtain a final concentration of 0.7% chitosan and 5 log10 PFU/ml virus. Virus-chitosan suspensions were incubated for 3 h at 37 °C. Untreated viruses in PBS, in PBS with acetic acid, and in PBS with HCl were tested as controls. Each experiment was run in duplicate and replicated at least twice. Water-soluble chitosan (53 kDa) reduced phiX174, MS2, FCV-F9 and MNV-1 titers by 0.59, 2.44, 3.36, and 0.34 log10 PFU/ml respectively. Chitosans in acetic acid decreased phiX174 by 1.19–1.29, MS2 by 1.88–5.37, FCV-F9 by 2.27–2.94, and MNV-1 by 0.09–0.28 log10 PFU/ml, respectively. Increasing the MW of chitosan corresponded with an increasing antiviral effect on MS2, but did not appear to play a role for the other three tested viral surrogates. Overall, chitosan treatments showed the greatest reduction for FCV-F9, and MS2 followed by phiX174, and with no significant effect on MNV-1.

► Increasing MW of chitosan directly corresponded to increased effects on MS2, but not on the other three viral surrogates. ► Higher MW chitosans (over 200 kDa) in acetic acid decreased phi X174, MS2 and FCV-F9 titers after 3 h at 37°C. ► Water-soluble chitosan (53 kDa) could reduce MS2 and FCV-F9 titers better than phiX174 or MNV-1 after 3 h at 37°C.