A critical review on the approaches to assess the infectivity of the Hepatitis E virus (HEV) in food recommended that a cell culture-based method should be developed. Due to the observations that viral loads in food may be low, it is important to maximise the potential for detection of HEV in a food source in order to fully assess infectivity. To do so, would require minimal processing of any target material. In order to proceed with the development of an infectivity culture method that is simple, robust and reproducible, there are a number of points to address; one being to assess if food homogenates are cytotoxic to HEV susceptible target cells. Food matrices previously shown to have detectable HEV nucleic acid were selected for analysis and assessed for their effect on the percentage survival of three cell lines commonly used for infectivity assays. Target cells used were A549, PLC/PRF/5 and HepG2 cells. The results showed that, as expected, various food homogenates have differing effects on cells in vitro. In this study, the most robust cell line over a time period was the A549 cell line in comparison to HepG2, with PLC/PRF/5 cells being the most sensitive. Overall, this data would suggest that FH can be left in contact with A549 cells for a period of up to 72 h to maximise the potential for testing infection. Using food homogenates directly would negate any concerns over losing virus as a result of any additional processing steps.

对评估食品中戊型肝炎病毒 (HEV) 感染性的方法进行了严格审查，建议开发一种基于细胞培养的方法。由于观察到食品中的病毒载量可能较低，因此必须最大限度地发挥食品源中检测 HEV 的潜力，以便全面评估传染性。为此，需要对任何目标材料进行最少的处理。为了继续开发一种简单、稳健且可重复的感染性培养方法，有许多要点需要解决；其中之一是评估食物匀浆是否对 HEV 易感靶细胞具有细胞毒性。选择先前显示具有可检测的 HEV 核酸的食物基质进行分析，并评估其对通常用于感染性测定的三种细胞系的存活百分比的影响。使用的靶细胞是A549、PLC/PRF/5和HepG2细胞。结果表明，正如预期的那样，不同的食物匀浆对体外细胞有不同的影响。在这项研究中，与 HepG2 相比，一段时间内最稳定的细胞系是 A549 细胞系，其中 PLC/PRF/5 细胞最敏感。总体而言，该数据表明 FH 可以与 A549 细胞接触长达 72 小时，以最大限度地发挥测试感染的潜力。直接使用食品匀浆可以消除由于任何额外的处理步骤而导致病毒丢失的担忧。