Adenoviruses can cause respiratory, eye, and intestinal tract infections, and, like other viruses, must hijack the cellular machinery of infected organisms in order to produce proteins and their own viral spawn.
The researchers prepared solutions containing adenoviruses and then treated the samples with a low-temperature plasma created by applying a voltage to a gaseous mixture in a syringe. The strong electric field energized electrons that collided with molecules in the gas, generating charged particles and highly reactive species such as oxygen atoms that likely etched away the protein shell of the viruses and damaged or destroyed the viral DNA.
Adenoviruses pose life-threatening risks to patients undergoing stem-cell therapy, so the anti-viral plasma treatment may help pave the way to safer therapies, the researchers write. Because plasma jets have multiple biomedical applications,
