Cryptosporidium contamination of drinking water systems continues to be a public health issue
for the drinking water industry. The current US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) methods for detecting Cryptosporidium in
water (USEPA Method 1623) provides information on the presence or absence of oocysts, but
gives no information on the isolate or whether the oocysts are infectious. A recent study using
cell culture combined with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) detected infectious oocysts in 1.4%
of 1,690 treated drinking water samples collected from 82 surface water treatment plants. As
a follow-up to this earlier study, 3 assays combining cell culture with various infection detection
methods were evaluated in 2 laboratories to assess sensitivity, reliability, and accuracy
(frequency of false positives and false negatives). The infectivity detection methods were
immunofluorescence microscopy (IFA), PCR, and reverse transcriptase-PCR (RT-PCR)
combined with post-detection genotyping. The most reliable assay will be used to test 1000L
treated drinking water samples from participating utilities for the presence of infectious
Cryptosporidium oocysts. Includes 24 references, tables, figure.
| Edition : | Vol. - No. |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 230 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 11 |
| Published : | 11/01/2007 |
