Use of portable microbial samplers for estimating inhalation exposure to viable biological agents

Detection of airborne Coccidioides spores using lightweight portable air samplers affixed to uncrewed aircraft systems in California's Central Valley

Coccidioidomycosis is an emerging fungal infection caused by inhalation of Coccidioides spp. spores. While airborne dispersal is critical to Coccidioides transmission, limited recovery of the pathogen from air has hindered understanding of the aerosolization and transport of spores. Here, we examine uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) with portable, active air samplers as a novel means of capturing aerosolized Coccidioides and characterizing emissions and exposure risk. We sampled in September 2023 in eastern San Luis Obispo County, California, in an area with confirmed Coccidioides immitis in soils. We completed 41 20-minute flights across 14 sites using UAS equipped with an 8 L/min bioaerosol sampler and a low-cost particulate matter sensor. We sampled source soils and air under ambient conditions using one UAS at 1-10 m above ground level, and under a simulated high-dust event using two UAS, one at <2 m height and one at 5-12 m. We detected Coccidioides DNA in two of 41 air samples (4.9%), both under ambient conditions at 8 m above ground level, representing the highest known height of airborne Coccidioides detection. Spatially explicit UAS-based sampling could enhance understanding of Coccidioides aerobiology and enable detection in hard-to-reach or hazardous air masses, including dust storms and wildfire smoke.

Monitoring antibiotic resistomes and bacterial microbiomes in the aerosols from fine, hazy, and dusty weather in Tianjin, China using a developed high-volume tandem liquid impinging sampler

Accurate quantification of the airborne antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) is critically important to assess their health risks. However, the currently widely used high-volume filter sampler (HVFS) often causes the desiccation of the sample, interfering with subsequent bacterial culture. To overcome this limitation, a high-volume tandem liquid impinging sampler (HVTLIS) was developed and optimized to investigate the airborne bacterial microbiomes and antibiotic resistomes under different weathers in Tianjin, China. Results revealed that HVTLIS can capture significantly more diverse culturable bacteria, ARB, and ARGs than HVFS. Compared with fine and hazy weathers, dusty weather had significantly more diverse and abundant airborne bacteria, ARGs, and human opportunistic pathogens with the resistance to last-resort antibiotics of carbapenems and polymyxin B, implicating a potential human health threat of dusty bioaerosols. Intriguingly, we represented the first report of Saccharibacteria predominance in the bioaerosol, demonstrating that the potential advantage of HVTLIS in collecting airborne microbes.

Dexamethasone loaded bilayered 3D tubular scaffold reduces restenosis at the anastomotic site of tracheal replacement: in vitro and in vivo assessments

Despite recent developments in the tracheal tissue engineering field, the creation of a patient specific substitute possessing both appropriate mechanical and biointerfacial properties remains challenging. Most tracheal replacement therapies fail due to restenosis at the anastomosis site. In this study, we designed a robust, biodegradable, 3D tubular scaffold by combining electrospinning (ELSP) and 3D (three-dimensional) printing techniques for use in transplantation therapy. After that, we loaded dexamethasone (DEX) onto the 3D tubular scaffold using mild surface modification reactions by using polydopamine (PDA), polyethyleneimine (PEI), and carboxymethyl-β-cyclodextrin (βCD). As a result, the fabricated 3D tubular scaffold had robust mechanical properties and the chemical modifications were confirmed to have proceeded successfully by physico-chemical analysis. The surface treatments allowed for a larger amount of DEX to be loaded onto the βCD modified scaffold as compared to the bare group. In vitro and in vivo studies demonstrated that the DEX loaded 3D tubular scaffold exhibited significantly enhanced anti-inflammation activity, enhanced tracheal mucosal regeneration, and formation of a patent airway. From our results, we believe that our system may represent an innovative paradigm in tracheal tissue engineering by providing proper mechanical properties and successful formation of tracheal tissue as a means of remodeling and healing tracheal defects for use in transplantation therapy.

Bioaerosol Sampling: Classical Approaches, Advances, and Perspectives

Bioaerosol sampling is an essential and integral part of any bioaerosol investigation. Since bioaerosols are very diverse in terms of their sizes, species, biological properties, and requirements for their detection and quantification, bioaerosol sampling is an active, yet challenging research area. This paper was inspired by the discussions during the 2018 International Aerosol Conference (IAC) (St. Louis, MO) regarding the need to summarize the current state of the art in bioaerosol research, including bioaerosol sampling, and the need to develop a more standardized set of guidelines for protocols used in bioaerosol research. The manuscript is a combination of literature review and perspectives: it discusses the main bioaerosol sampling techniques and then overviews the latest technical developments in each area; the overview is followed by the discussion of the emerging trends and developments in the field, including personal sampling, application of passive samplers, and advances toward improving bioaerosol detection limits as well as the emerging challenges such as collection of viruses and collection of unbiased samples for bioaerosol sequencing. The paper also discusses some of the practical aspects of bioaerosol sampling with particular focus on sampling aspects that could lead to bioaerosol determination bias. The manuscript concludes by suggesting several goals for bioaerosol sampling and development community to work towards and describes some of the grand bioaerosol challenges discussed at the IAC 2018.

Investigation of Removal Capacities of Biofilters for Airborne Viable Micro-Organisms

New emerging issues appears regarding the possible aerosolization of micro-organisms from biofilters to the ambient air. Traditional bioaerosol sampling and cultural methods used in literature offer relative efficiencies. In this study, a new method revolving around a particle counter capable of detecting total and viable particles in real time was used. This counter (BioTrak 9510-BD) uses laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) technology to determine the biological nature of the particle. The concentration of viable particles was measured on two semi-industrial pilot scale biofilters in order to estimate the Removal Efficiency in viable particles (RE_vp) in stable conditions and to examine the influence of pollutant feeding and relative humidification of the gaseous effluent on the RE_vp. The RE_vp of biofilters reached near 80% and highlighted both the stability of that removal and the statistical equivalence between two identical biofilters. Pollutant deprivation periods of 12 h, 48 h and 30 days were shown to have no influence on the biofilters’ removal capacity, demonstrating the robustness and adaptation capacities of the flora. In contrast, a 90-day famine period turned the biofilters into emitters of viable particles. Finally, the humidification of the effluent was shown to negatively influence the removal capacity for viable particles, as drying off the air was shown to increase the RE_vp from 60 to 85%.

A high-flow portable biological aerosol trap (HighBioTrap) for rapid microbial detection

Bioaerosols exposure can lead to many adverse health effects and even result in death if highly infectious agents involved. Apparently, there is a great need for rapid detection of bioaerosols, for which air sampling often is the first critical step. However, currently available samplers often either require an external power and/or with low sampling flow rate, thus falling short of providing a practical solution when response time is of great concern. Here, we have designed and evaluated a new portable high volume bioaerosol sampler named as HighBioTrap through optimizing its operating parameters. The sampler was operated at a sampling flow rate of 1200 L/min, with an impaction velocity of about 10.2 m/s (S/W = 1.5, T/W = 1), while the weight of the sampler is about 1.9 kg. The performances of the HighBioTrap sampler were tested both in lab controlled and natural environments (outdoor and indoor environments in a university building) along with the reference sampler-the BioStage impactor using aerosolized Polystyrene (PS) uniform microspheres of various sizes, aerosolized bacteria and also ambient air particles. The microbial community structures of collected culturable bacterial aerosol particles both by the HighBioTrap and the BioStage impactor in the natural environments were analyzed using gene sequence method. Experimental results with PS particles showed the HighBioTrap has a cutoff size of ~ 2 µm. The widely used impactor design equation was found to be not applicable for predicting the performance of the HighBioTrap due to its large Reynolds number. When sampling aerosolized individual Pseudomonas fluorescens and Bacillus subtilis bacterial particles, the HighBioTrap had physical collection efficiencies of 10% and 20%, respectively. Despite the higher desiccation effects introduced by higher flow rate, the HighBioTrap was shown to obtain a higher microbial diversity than the BioStage impactor for both in outdoor and indoor environments given the same sampling time (p < 0.01). Our data also showed that most of the desiccation effects might have occurred between 3 and 5 min of the sampling and an impaction velocity of around 10 m/s might be a close-to-optimal impaction velocity for collecting most environmental bacterial aerosols while maximally preserving their culturability. This work contributes to our understanding of microbial sampling stress (impaction velocity and sampling time), while developing a portable high volume sampler. The HighBioTrap sampler could find its great efficiencies in qualitative microbial aerosol detection and analysis, such as investigation of microbial aerosol diversity for a particular environment, or when the low level of pathogens is present and detection time is of great concern.

Immunohistochemical study on the distribution of β-defensin 1 and β-defensin 2 throughout the respiratory tract of healthy rats

The distributions of β-defensin 1 and 2 in secretory host defense system throughout respiratory tract of healthy rats were immunohistochemically investigated. In the nasal epithelium, a large number of non-ciliated and non-microvillous cells (NCs) were immunopositive for both β-defensin 1 and 2, whereas a small number of goblet cells (GCs) were immunopositive only for β-defensin 1. Beta-defensin 2-immunopositive GCs were few. In the nasal glands, a small number of acinar cells and a large number of ductal epithelial cells were immunopositive for both β-defensins. In the laryngeal and tracheal epithelia, a very few NCs and GCs were immunopositive for both β-defensins. In laryngeal and tracheal glands, a very few acinar cells and a large number of ductal epithelial cells were immunopositive for both β-defensins. In the extra-pulmonary bronchus, a small number of NCs were immunopositive for both β-defensins. A small number of GCs were immunopositive for β-defensin 1, whereas few GCs were immunopositive for β-defensin 2. From the intra-pulmonary bronchus to alveoli, a very few or no epithelial cells were immunopositive for both β-defensins. In the mucus and periciliary layers, β-defensin 1 was detected from the nose to the extra-pulmonary bronchus, whereas β-defensin 2 was weakly detected only in the nose and the larynx. These findings suggest that the secretory sources of β-defensin 1 and 2 are mainly distributed in the nasal mucosa and gradually decrease toward the caudal airway in healthy rats.

Indoor fungal contamination: health risks and measurement methods in hospitals, homes and workplaces

Indoor fungal contamination has been associated with a wide range of adverse health effects, including infectious diseases, toxic effects and allergies. The diversity of fungi contributes to the complex role that they play in indoor environments and human diseases. Molds have a major impact on public health, and can cause different consequences in hospitals, homes and workplaces. This review presents the methods used to assess fungal contamination in these various environments, and discusses advantages and disadvantages for each method in consideration with different health risks. Air, dust and surface sampling strategies are compared, as well as the limits of various methods are used to detect and quantify fungal particles and fungal compounds. In addition to conventional microscopic and culture approaches, more recent chemical, immunoassay and polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based methods are described. This article also identifies common needs for future multidisciplinary research and development projects in this field, with specific interests on viable fungi and fungal fragment detections. The determination of fungal load and the detection of species in environmental samples greatly depend on the strategy of sampling and analysis. Quantitative PCR was found useful to identify associations between specific fungi and common diseases. The next-generation sequencing methods may afford new perspectives in this area.

Enhancing bioaerosol sampling by Andersen impactors using mineral-oil-spread agar plate

As a bioaerosol sampling standard, Andersen type impactor is widely used since its invention in 1950s, including the investigation of the anthrax attacks in the United States in 2001. However, its related problems such as impaction and desiccation stress as well as particle bounce have not been solved. Here, we improved its biological collection efficiencies by plating a mineral oil layer (100 µL) onto the agar plate. An Andersen six-stage sampler and a BioStage impactor were tested with mineral-oil-spread agar plates in collecting indoor and outdoor bacterial and fungal aerosols. The effects of sampling times (5, 10 and 20 min) were also studied using the BioStage impactor when sampling environmental bioaerosols as well as aerosolized Bacillus subtilis (G+) and Escherichia coli (G-). In addition, particle bounce reduction by mineral-oil-plate was also investigated using an optical particle counter (OPC). Experimental results revealed that use of mineral-oil-spread agar plate can substantially enhance culturable bioaerosol recoveries by Andersen type impactors (p-values<0.05). The recovery enhancement was shown to depend on bioaerosol size, type, sampling time and environment. In general, more enhancements (extra 20%) were observed for last stage of the Andersen six-stage samplers compared to the BioStage impactor for 10 min sampling. When sampling aerosolized B. subtilis, E. coli and environmental aerosols, the enhancement was shown to increase with increasing sampling time, ranging from 50% increase at 5 min to ∼100% at 20 min. OPC results indicated that use of mineral oil can effectively reduce the particle bounce with an average of 66% for 10 min sampling. Our work suggests that enhancements for fungal aerosols were primarily attributed to the reduced impaction stress, while for bacterial aerosols reduced impaction, desiccation and particle bounce played major roles. The developed technology can readily enhance the agar-based techniques including those high volume portable samplers for bioaerosol monitoring.

Comparative evaluation of three impactor samplers for measuring airborne bacteria and fungi concentrations

Portable microbial samplers are useful for detecting microorganisms in the air. However, limited data are available on their performance when sampling airborne biological agents in a routine practice. We compared bacterial and fungal concentrations obtained in field conditions using three impactor samplers with different designs (AES Chemunex Sampl'Air, bioMérieux Air Ideal, and Sartorius AirPort MD8/BACTair). The linearity of mold collection was tested in the range of 100 L to 1000 L, and all the devices had a correlation coefficient higher than 0.95. For optimal comparison of the samplers, we performed experiments in different hospital rooms with varying levels of air biocontamination. Each sampling procedure was repeated to assess reproducibility. No significant difference between the samplers was observed for the mold concentrations on Sabouraud agar, whereas Sampl'Air collected significantly more bacteria on tryptic soy agar than Air Ideal or BACTair at one of the sites. Impactor location in the room was nevertheless associated with the variability observed with the three samplers at the highest microbial concentration levels. On the basis of their performance, autonomy and simplicity of use, these three impactors are suitable for routine indoor evaluation of microbial air contamination.

Integration of high volume portable aerosol-to-hydrosol sampling and qPCR in monitoring bioaerosols

In this study, the integration of a high volume, portable aerosol-to-hydrosol sampling technique and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) was investigated for bioaerosol monitoring by adapting the RCS High Flow to sample air with mineral-oil-strips. Bacillus subtilis var niger and Pseudomonas fluorescens were aerosolized and collected by the RCS High Flow loaded with mineral-oil-strips for 1, 2 and 5 min. In addition, the adapted aerosol-to-hydrosol sampler was also tested for sampling environmental bacterial aerosols in four different environments (a back yard, a student dorm, a dining hall, and a play ground). The performances of the RCS High Flow with mineral-oil-strips were compared with the use of agar strips under similar conditions in all experiments. Air samples collected by the RCS High Flow were cultured, and in addition those collected with mineral-oil-strips were also quantified using qPCR. When sampling B. subtilis var niger aerosols, the use of mineral-oil-strips was shown to report significantly higher culturable concentrations than those obtained by agar strips regardless of the sampling time tested (p-value = 0.04). In contrast, the differences between the two methods when sampling P. fluorescens aerosols were not statistically significant (p-value = 0.5). When coupled with qPCR, the RCS High Flow loaded with mineral-oil-strips obtained significantly higher bacterial aerosol concentrations than those detected by the culturing method. The sampling time was observed to have negligible effects on the efficiency of the technology developed here. When sampling in different environments, the use of mineral-oil-strip was observed to yield significantly higher, about 4-12 times, culturable bacterial aerosol concentration levels compared to the use of agar. This study demonstrated a high volume (100 L min⁻¹) portable aerosol-to-hydrosol sampling technique, holding broad promise in monitoring airborne biological threats when coupled with qPCR technology. Yet, caution should be taken in relating the bioaerosol concentrations to health risks as qPCR detects both culturable and non-culturable cells including inactivated ones.

Thermal effects on bacterial bioaerosols in continuous air flow

Exposure to bacterial bioaerosols can have adverse effects on health, such as infectious diseases, acute toxic effects, and allergies. The search for ways of preventing and curing the harmful effects of bacterial bioaerosols has created a strong demand for the study and development of an efficient method of controlling bioaerosols. We investigated the thermal effects on bacterial bioaerosols of Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis by using a thermal electric heating system in continuous air flow. The bacterial bioaerosols were exposed to a surrounding temperature that ranged from 20 degrees C to 700 degrees C for about 0.3 s. Both E. coli and B. subtilis vegetative cells were rendered more than 99.9% inactive at 160 degrees C and 350 degrees C of wall temperature of the quartz tube, respectively. Although the data on bacterial injury showed that the bacteria tended to sustain greater damage as the surrounding temperature increased, Gram-negative E. coli was highly sensitive to structural injury but Gram-positive B. subtilis was slightly more sensitive to metabolic injury. In addition, the inactivation of E. coli endotoxins was found to range from 9.2% (at 200 degrees C) to 82.0% (at 700 degrees C). However, the particle size distribution and morphology of both bacterial bioaerosols were maintained, despite exposure to a surrounding temperature of 700 degrees C. Our results show that thermal heating in a continuous air flow can be used with short exposure time to control bacterial bioaerosols by rendering the bacteria and endotoxins to a large extent inactive. This result could also be useful for developing more effective thermal treatment strategies for use in air purification or sterilization systems to control bioaerosols.

Analysis of portable impactor performance for enumeration of viable bioaerosols

Portable impactors are increasingly being used to estimate concentration of bioaerosols in residential and occupational environments; however, little data are available about their performance. This study investigated the overall performances of the SMA MicroPortable, BioCulture, Microflow, Microbiological Air Sampler (MAS-100), Millipore Air Tester, SAS Super 180, and RCS High Flow portable microbial samplers when collecting bacteria and fungi both indoors and outdoors. The performance of these samplers was compared with that of the BioStage impactor. The Button Aerosol Sampler equipped with gelatin filter was also included in the study. Results showed that the sampling environment can have a statistically significant effect on sampler performance, most likely due to the differences in airborne microorganism composition and/or their size distribution. Data analysis using analysis of variance showed that the relative performance of all samplers (except the RCS High Flow and MAS-100) was statistically different (lower) compared with the BioStage. The MAS-100 also had statistically higher performance compared with other portable samplers except the RCS High Flow. The Millipore Air Tester and the SMA had the lowest performances. The relative performance of the impactors was described using a multiple linear regression model (R(2) = 0.83); the effects of the samplers' cutoff sizes and jet-to-plate distances as predictor variables were statistically significant. The data presented in this study will help field professionals in selecting bioaerosol samplers. The developed empirical formula describing the overall performance of bioaerosol impactors can assist in sampler design.