A new ozone-based method for virus inactivation: preliminary study.

The nebulization technique reported here could be used to inactivate viruses with ozone in large volumes of body fluids, such as plasma, partial blood and perhaps whole blood in a short time. Coliphage MS2 was used as a model because it is safe, easy to handle and more resistant to chemical disinfections than viruses such as HIV. The theoretical curves and experimental points, describing ozone inactivation of MS2, form a semi-sigmoid of congruent data. There was a > 7log10 reduction in MS2 viability and the possibilities of minimizing the ozone concentration required to kill viruses are indicated. The analysis was expanded to account for the interaction of ozone with a virus suspension in the shape of a thin film from the experimental findings of Bolton et al. We again find a semi-sigmoid of congruent data for their case, i.e. describing ozone inactivation of the influenza A virus (WSN strain) and the vesicular stomatitis virus versus time. For the method of nebulization, the exposure time of droplets with ozone is a few seconds, whereas for the thin film method the exposure time is measured in hours.