Waterborne diseases affect more than 2 billion people worldwide, causing substantial economic burden. For example, the treatment of waterborne diseases costs more than $2 billion annually in the United States alone, with 90 million cases recorded per year. Among waterborne pathogen-related problems, one of the most common public health concerns is the presence of total coliform bacteria and Escherichia coli (E. coli) in drinking water, which indicates fecal contamination. Traditional culture-based bacteria detection methods often take 24-48 hours, followed by visual inspection and colony counting by an expert, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines. Alternatively, molecular detection methods based on, for example, the amplification of nucleic acids, can reduce the detection time to a few hours, but they generally lack the sensitivity for detecting bacteria at very low concentrations, and are not capable of differentiating between live and dead microorganisms. Furthermore, there is no EPA-approved nucleic acid-based method for detecting coliform bacteria in water samples.
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Source: Phys.org