Enteric virus isolation in different cell cultures.

The need for establishing an optimum tissue culture cell line for isolation of enteric viruses prompted a comparative study of cell lines for the isolation of enteric viruses from rectal swab specimens. The viruses isolated included all three types of poliovirus, 12 types of echovirus, seven types of group A and two of group B coxsackievirus, 24 strains of adenovirus, and eight untyped agents which probably represent new enteroviruses. One hundred positive isolations were made from 387 rectal swab specimens; 86 were obtained in human kidney cultures. This was almost twice the number obtained with monkey kidney and more than one-and-a-half times that obtained with human lung cells (WI-38). A diploid human epithelial cell line (Attleson) was tested and was found to be inferior to both monkey kidney and WI-38 cells for enteric viruses. Human kidney cells were particularly useful for group A coxsackieviruses and adenoviruses.