Norovirus causes acute gastroenteritis, and foodborne outbreaks have become a serious concern globally, occurring especially during the winter. The contamination of food by norovirus can often be attributed to infected food handlers. Therefore, the management of food handlers presenting with gastrointestinal symptoms must be handled very carefully. As norovirus infections are often asymptomatic, it is highly recommended that all food handlers be tested for infection to reduce the risk of contaminating food products. The intensive surveillance of food handlers for norovirus necessarily requires a rapid and sensitive system for detecting the norovirus genome in fecal specimens. Until now, a nucleic acid amplification test kit for norovirus genome has been used, based on a one-step real-time PCR using heat-treated fecal specimens as templates (heat-treatment kit). In the present study, we have evaluated a new kit that does not require the fecal specimens to undergo heat-treatment. Our results suggest that this new kit exhibited a detection sensitivity of 105 noroviral genome copies order/g stool, a similar value to that of the heat-treatment kit. Because of the simplified test protocol, the new kit had a shorter turnaround time and a lower risk of cross-contamination than the heat-treatment kit. In view of these advantages, the new kit should be able to provide a more rapid and reliable nucleic acid test for detecting norovirus.
