Abstract
The world is currently facing a serious health burden of waterborne diseases, including diarrhea, gastrointestinal diseases, and systemic illnesses. The control of these infectious diseases ultimately depends on the access to safe drinking water, properly managed sanitation, and hygiene practices. Therefore, ultrasensitive, rapid, and specific monitoring platforms for bacterial pathogens in ambient waters at the point of sample collection are urgently needed. We conducted a literature review on state-of-the-art research of rapid in-field aquatic bacteria detection methods, including cell-based methods, nucleic acid amplification detection methods, and biosensors. The detection performance, the advantages, and the disadvantages of the technologies are critically discussed. We envision that promising monitoring approaches should be automated, real-time, and target-multiplexed, thus allowing comprehensive evaluation of exposure risks attributable to waterborne pathogens and even emerging microbial contaminants such as antibiotic resistance genes, which leads to better protection of public health.
Highlights
Access to adequate water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) has long been a significant public health concern and an international development policy
Numerous research advances have been made in such integrated platform for detection and identification of bacterial pathogens including but not limited to Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (S. typhi) in water
Miniaturized cell cultivation techniques based on microfluidic devices and Lab-on-a-Chip technologies consume less fluid, take less volume, and usually have higher tolerance toward ambient conditions, reducing the total cost and time for bacterial analysis [12]
Summary
Genomic segments of the pathogen’s genomes allow rapid, highly specific, and more sensitive detection, which better fit the expectations of timely monitoring and effective surveillance of aquatic pathogens in a range of water environmental settings. The major drawback of PCR-related methods usually lies in their long response time and limited portability, since they rely on fussy thermal cycling and require additional equipment to detect the amplification products [35]. Another drawback is that trained personnel with experimental skills are needed to perform the assays, making the PCR-based systems impractical in resource-limited settings [4, 5].
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