Oocyst Movement Potential as a Method to Determine the Potential Viability of Cryptosporidium parvum.

摘要

Cryptosporidium parvum is a coccidian parasite that is commonly transmitted via fecal-oral routes (1,2). Cryptosporidiosis has become a major health concern in the United States because of some recent outbreaks associated with public water supplies (3) . Water utilities are particularly concerned since conventional water treatment does not inactivate or remove all of the oocysts (4,5) . Current research is focusing on the optimization of water treatment to remove the oocysts or to inactivate oocysts that may get past the existing barriers in the treatment processes (6,7). Current methods used to assay potential viability of Cryptosporidium parvum are labor intensive and require high levels of technical skill to provide repeatability (8,9,10).