Full text

Turn on search term navigation

© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

We have used a rapid, portable assay (Bacterisk) to determine the bacterial water quality along several inland waters in SW England. Water samples were compared by a conventional membrane filter and culture methods for faecal indicator bacteria (FIB; E. coli and enterococci) and endotoxin measurement by Bacterisk. The Bacterisk data, measured in near-real-time, correlate well with both E. coli and enterococci, but also allow the presence of potential pathogens of a non-faecal origin to be detected. The sensitivity was calculated to be 92.96% with a specificity of 46.3% for E. coli with an expanded uncertainty of 22.07% and an Endotoxin Risk detection limit of 25 units. The presence of Bacterisk detectable non-faecal pathogenic bacteria in the water samples was successfully confirmed by Illumina MiSeq sequencing followed by target species-specific qPCR. Sequencing showed the presence of pathogens including Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella typhi, Acinetobacter baumannii, Shigella spp., and Legionella spp. as well as antimicrobial resistance genes. Furthermore, the portable Bacterisk assay was able to acquire data on the water quality from different locations and at different time points, providing a comprehensive surveillance tool that challenges the time to results by conventional methods (minutes instead of days), yielding compatible results.

Details

Title
Water Quality Assessment: Endotoxin Brings Real-Time Measurements and Non-Faecally Transmitted Bacteria to the Table
Author
Good, Christian 1 ; White, Alistair 1 ; Brandão João 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Seymour, Christopher 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Jackson, Simon K 4 

 Molendotech Limited, Brixham Laboratory, Blackball Lane, Freshwater Quarry, Brixham TQ5 8BA, UK; [email protected] (C.G.); [email protected] (A.W.) 
 National Institute of Health Dr. Ricardo Jorge, Department of Environmental Health, Av. Padre Cruz, 1649-016 Lisboa, Portugal; [email protected], cE3c—Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande 016, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal 
 Anglian Water, Kingfisher Way, Hinchingbrooke Business Park, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, PE29 6FL, UK; [email protected] 
 Molendotech Limited, Brixham Laboratory, Blackball Lane, Freshwater Quarry, Brixham TQ5 8BA, UK; [email protected] (C.G.); [email protected] (A.W.), School of Biomedical Science, Faculty of Health, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK 
First page
1674
Publication year
2025
Publication date
2025
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
20734441
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
3217747694
Copyright
© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.