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. 2024 Jun 15;196(7):619.
doi: 10.1007/s10661-024-12764-2.

Reduction of Helicobacter pylori cells in rural water supply using slow sand filtration

Javier Leyton  1 , Javier Fernández  2 , Patricia Acosta  3 , Andrés Quiroga  3 , Francesc Codony  4
Affiliations

Reduction of Helicobacter pylori cells in rural water supply using slow sand filtration

Javier Leyton et al. Environ Monit Assess. .

Abstract

Helicobacter pylori is a microorganism that infects 60% of the population and is considered the main cause of atrophic gastritis, gastric and duodenal ulcers, and gastric cancer. Different emerging pathogens have been found in drinking water and their presence is considered to be an important public health problem. For this reason, it is necessary to carry out the validation of reliable technologies for this type of pathogens and evaluate their performance. This paper reports, for the first time, H. pylori reduction in a drinking water pilot plant of two slow sand filters (SSF). Inlet water was taken from a gravel filtration system of a rural water supply in Colombia and then inoculated with viable cells of H. pylori. By determining the Genomic Units (GU) through quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (qPCR), the concentration of GU/sample was measured. In the inlet water amplification for SSF1 and SSF2 were 5.13 × 102 ± 4.48 × 102 and 6.59 × 102 ± 7.32 × 102, respectively, while for the treated water they were 7.0 ± 5.6 and 2.05 × 101 ± 2.9 × 101 GU/sample for SSF1 and SSF2, respectively. The SSF pilot plant reached up to 3 log reduction units of H. pylori; therefore, since there is not an H. pylori contamination indicator and its periodic monitoring is financially complicated, the SSF could guarantee the drinking water quality necessity that exists in rural areas and small municipalities in developing countries, where infection rates and prevalence of this pathogen are high.

Keywords: Helicobacter pylori; Drinking water; Emerging pathogens; Slow sand filters; Water quality.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Plant view of pilot plant system
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Profile view of pilot plant system
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Standard curve used for quantification
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Melting curve plot
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Performance of Helicobacter pylori concentrations at the inlet and outlet of the SSF
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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