Noroviruses

Norovirus is a genus of the Caliciviridae family, named for the cup-shaped depressions visible in the capsid by electron microscopy (Fauquet et ah,... 

The human caliciviruses, norovirus (NoV) and sapovirus, have also been described as small round structured viruses, for their 27-30 nm capsids. The NoV capsid consists of 180 copies of the VPl major capsid protein packed as an icosahedron (Prasad et ah, 1999) and the VP2 minor capsid protein, which may contribute to stability (Bertolotti-Ciarlet et al., 2002). The S domain of VPl forms the inner shell of the capsid, while the P domain protrudes from the capsid surface and contributes to binding the histoblood group antigen receptor (Cao et ah, 2007) and antigenicity (Donaldson et ah, 2008 Lindesmith et ah, 2010). 

TABLE 1.1 Examples of norovirus outbreak reports published since 2005... 

NoV are readily transferred from hands to fomites and vice versa (Bidawid et al., 2004 D Souza et al., 2006). The pronoimced environmental stability of NoV particles also contributes to the spread of outbreaks from point sources of surface contamination. All stability studies have made use of surrogate organisms to model NoV response to conditions, since the human virus is not easily grown in cell culture (Duizer et al., 2004b Straub et al., 2007). The murine norovirus (MNV) and the feline calicivirus (FCV) have both been used, with the mouse virus providing more... 

Allwood, P. B., Malik, Y. S., Maherchandani, S., Vought, K., Johnson, L. A., Braymen, C., Hedberg, C. W., and Goyal, S. M. (2004). Occurrence of Escherichia coli, noroviruses, and F-specific coliphages in fresh market-ready produce. /. Food Prot. 67, 2387-2390. 

Bae, J. and Schwab, K. J. (2008). Evaluation of murine norovirus, feline calicivirus, poliovirus, and MS2 as surrogates for human norovirus in a model of viral persistence in surface water and groundwater. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 74, 477- 84. 

Baert, L., Uyttendaele, M., Van Coillie, E., and Debevere, J. (2008a). The reduction of murine norovirus 1, B. fragilis HSP40 infecting phage B40-8 and E. coli after a mild thermal pasteurization process of raspberry puree. Food Microbiol. 25, 871-874. 

Belliot, G., Lavaux, A., Souihel, D., Agnello, D., and Pothier, P. (2008). Use of murine norovirus as a surrogate to evaluate resistance of human norovirus to disinfectants. 

Bidawid, S., Malik, N., Adegbunrin, O., Sattar, S. A., and Farber, J. M. (2004). Norovirus cross-contamination during food handling and interruption of virus transfer by hand antisepsis Experiments with feline calicivirus as a surrogate. J. Food Prot. 67,103-109. 

Boxman, I., Dijkman, R., Verhoef, L., Maat, A., van Dijk, G., Vennema, H., and Koopmans, M. (2009a). Norovirus on swabs taken from hands illustrate route of transmission A case study. /. Food Prot. 72,1753-1755. 

Bruggink, L. and Marshall, J. (2008). Molecular changes in the norovirus polymerase gene and their association with incidence of G11.4 norovirus-associated gastroenteritis outbreaks in Victoria, Australia, 2001-2005. Arch. Virol. 153, 729-732. 

Bruggink, L. D. and Marshall, J. A. (2009). Norovirus epidemics are linked to two distinct sets of controlling factors. Int. ]. Infect. Dis. 13, el25-el26. 

Bruggink, L., Sameer, R., and Marshall, J. (2010). Molecular and epidemiological characteristics of norovirus associated with community-based sporadic gastroenteritis incidents and norovirus outbreaks in Victoria, Australia, 2002-2007. Intervirology 53,167-172. 

Buckow, R., Isbarn, S., Knorr, D., Heinz, V., and Lehmacher, A. (2008). Predictive model for inactivation of feline calidvirus, a norovirus surrogate, by heat and high hydrostatic pressure. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 74,1030-1038. 

Calderon-Margalit, R., Sheffer, R., Halperin, T., Orr, N., Cohen, D., and Shohat, T. (2005). A large-scale gastroenteritis outbreak associated with Norovirus in nursing homes. Epidemiol. Infect. 133, 35-40. 

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