An Evaluation of Thermally Polluted Lakes for the Presence of Naegleria Fowleri via PCR Without Hazardous Cultivation

Overview

Amoeba are single celled protozoa that are comprised of a nucleus, surrounded by a mass of cytoplasm. The free-living amoeba Naegleria fowleri is the causative agent of primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), a highly fatal disease of the central nervous system. The organism exists in three morphological stages: encyst, trophozoite, and flagellated and is only pathogenic while in the trophozoite phase. N. fowleri thrives in warmer water and can tolerate temperatures up to 45℃. The infection is generally acquired while swimming, diving, or boating in freshwater lakes or rivers when the amoeba is forced up the nasal cavity. Other fatalities from PAM have proven inoculation can originate from domestic practices such as showering and nasal cleansing. Public bodies of water pose potential habitats for N. fowleri, putting the public's health at risk. Detection of N. fowleri, until now, required cultivation of the environmental sample, taking weeks, followed by PCR analysis. In this novel study, local thermally polluted and non-thermally polluted lakes were tested for the brain-eating amoeba N. fowleri and the public health risk evaluated. PCR was also conducted on seeded samples of a non-pathogenic amoeba Chaos carolinensis to determine the validity of identification methods. PCR results from the seeded samples tested consistently positive proving the method effective. Of the six thermally polluted and six non-thermally polluted sites, all proved to be negative. With PCR methods proven to be effective, the lakes were definitively labeled as non-infected at the sites chosen, rendering the public health risk to be very low.

Competition history

• AJAS 2018 Category not listed

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