Abstract
Protozoal water contamination is an alarming cause of countless waterborne outbreaks. The mosteminent causal protozoa are Cryptosporidium and Giardia species (spp.) as they can endure aquaticenvironment even with chlorine disinfectants. The currently used traditional techniques cannot permitan easy detection of the waterborne protozoa concerning their count, viability, and pathogenicity. Thepresent work detected protozoal contamination of the drinking water in Egypt with the determinationof their load, viability and potential pathogenicity. Four techniques were compared including conventionalstaining techniques, immunofluorescence (IF) staining, flow cytometry (FC) and molecularstudy. Also, viability was assessed by conventional trypan blue stain and nucleic acid stain. Along ayear, 64 water samples were collected and concentrated from water tanks and tap water of differentdistricts, significant differences (P < 0.001) was between the different techniques in each season regardingthe detection of Giardia cysts and Cryptosporidium oocysts. Number of total positive sampleswas significantly higher in tank water than tap water (P < 0.001) especially at summer. Flow cytometryand nested polymerase chain reaction (nPCR) proved to be much more sensitive than IF assay, andconventional staining techniques. Regarding viability, nucleic acid stain was more sensitive than trypanblue stain (P < 0.001). Also, C. parvum predominate other Cryptosporidium genotypes.
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