Obrová Klára, Vaňková Eva, Sláma Michal, Hodek Jan, Khun Josef, Ulrychová Lucie, Nogueira Filomena, Laos Triin, Sponseiler Isabella, Kašparová Petra, Machková Anna, Weber Jan, Scholtz Vladimír, Lion Thomas
St. Anna Children's Cancer Research Institute (CCRI), Division Molecular Microbiology, Vienna, Austria.
Department of Physics and Measurements, University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague, Czech Republic.
Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2022 Feb 14;10:815393. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2022.815393. eCollection 2022.
The current pandemic resulted in a rapidly increasing demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) initially leading to severe shortages of these items. Hence, during an unexpected and fast virus spread, the possibility of reusing highly efficient protective equipment could provide a viable solution for keeping both healthcare professionals and the general public equipped and protected. This requires an efficient decontamination technique that preserves functionality of the sensitive materials used for PPE production. Non-thermal plasma (NTP) is a decontamination technique with documented efficiency against select bacterial and fungal pathogens combined with low damage to exposed materials. We have investigated NTP for decontamination of high-efficiency P3 R filters from viral respiratory pathogens in comparison to other commonly used techniques. We show that NTP treatment completely inactivates SARS-CoV-2 and three other common human respiratory viruses including Influenza A, Rhinovirus and Adenovirus, revealing an efficiency comparable to 90°C dry heat or UVC light. Unlike some of the tested techniques (e.g., autoclaving), NTP neither influenced the filtering efficiency nor the microstructure of the filter. We demonstrate that NTP is a powerful and economic technology for efficient decontamination of protective filters and other sensitive materials from different respiratory pathogens.
当前的大流行导致对个人防护装备（PPE）的需求迅速增加，最初造成了这些物品的严重短缺。因此，在意外且迅速的病毒传播期间，重复使用高效防护装备的可能性可为医护人员和普通公众提供可行的解决方案，使其配备齐全并得到保护。这需要一种高效的去污技术，以保持用于生产个人防护装备的敏感材料的功能。非热等离子体（NTP）是一种去污技术，已证明其对特定细菌和真菌病原体具有高效性，且对暴露材料的损害较小。与其他常用技术相比，我们研究了非热等离子体对高效P3 R过滤器进行病毒呼吸道病原体去污的效果。我们发现，非热等离子体处理可使严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2（SARS-CoV-2）以及其他三种常见人类呼吸道病毒（包括甲型流感病毒、鼻病毒和腺病毒）完全失活，其效率与90°C干热或紫外线（UVC）光相当。与一些测试技术（如高压灭菌）不同，非热等离子体既不影响过滤器的过滤效率，也不影响其微观结构。我们证明，非热等离子体是一种强大且经济的技术，可有效去除防护过滤器和其他敏感材料上的不同呼吸道病原体。
