‘PREGNANCY TEST’ FOR WATER EXPLORING THE USE OF IMMUNOASSAYS TO DETECT BACTERIAL PATHOGENS IN WATER.

Imagine if testing water for the presence of diarrhoea causing bacteria was as easy as doing a pregnancy test at home. The appearance of a simple red line could indicate if the water is safe to consume, and if not, could possibly indicate what the contaminating bacteria is. If we could even do it in less than 18 hours (the standard time for accepted microbiological tests) we could rapidly adapt our water treatment process and patient’s treatment protocols. Even today, water testing is geared towards the presence or absence of indicator organisms that indicate the possible presence of other disease-causing microorganisms. These tests typically take between 24-48 hours to complete before we could start “searching” for the disease-causing microorganism in the water. To speed up the process scientists have started using molecular biology methods to detect and describe the DNA from the bacterial pathogens in water, but this is still typically confined to laboratories that have the equipment and expertise to run the experiments. More importantly these tests would still be done on bacteria already isolated from the water. If we want to develop a test that could theoretically be run in the field without a laboratory, we need to make sure that we can remove as much of the laboratory equipment from the equation. This would include ways to recover the bacteria from the water, how to detect the bacteria without first growing them in the laboratory and lastly how to confirm the type of bacteria present in the water.