Introduction of Giardia and Cryptosporidium

It is often said that water is the source of life, hence the quality of drinking water is directly related to human health. The conventional water monitoring scope includes the detection of physical, chemical and bacterial indicators such as color, residual chlorine, impurities, and bacterial numbers, other than those, there are two waterborne protozoa parasites namely Giardia and Cryptosporidium.

Giardia and cryptosporidium are distributed all over the world and can seriously cause harm to drinking water. People infected with cryptosporidium or giardia usually get diarrhea (runny poo). Some people can get very sick from cryptosporidium or giardia. The giardia and cryptosporidium are important factors to affect water quality, and the tests for them are paid more and more attention to in recent years.

Detection of Cryptosporidium and Giardia (IMS-IF)

Briefly, there are two steps to detect the two parasites from a water sample.

1. IMS (Immunomagetic Separation). Parasites were captured using antibody-coated magnetic beads. After elution from the beads, parasites were labeled with anti-Giardia and anti-Cryptosporidium monoclonal antibodies.

2. IFA (Indirect Fluorescent antibody). After washes with phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) and then centrifugation, the whole pellet was examined under a fluorescence microscope, allowing Cryptosporidium and Giardia to be identified and counted.

                                                                                    Cryptosporidium and Giardia under fluorescence microscope

Solution from Micro-shot

Usually, the sample are stained with DAPI and FITC fluorescence stain, the microscope should be fluorescence microscope with UV and blue excitation light. Guanggzhou Micro-shot Technology Co Ltd provides a professional solution for detecting the cryptosporidium and giardia samples:

The research-level LED fluorescence microscope MF43-N from Micro-shot uses LED fluorescence light source and semi apo fluorescence objective, and it can detect weak fluorescence signal so that the result will be obvious and precise. 

                                                                                                                                 MF43-N

                                                                                   Giardia stained with FITC (left) and DAPI (right) under MF43-N

                                                                             Cryptosporidium stained with FITC (left) and DAPI (right) under MF43-N