Detection of Acinetobacter spp. in rural drinking water supplies

Abstract

A bacteriological survey was conducted of untreated, individual groundwater supplies in Preston County, W.Va. Nearly 60% of the water supplies contained total coliforms in excess of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency maximum contaminant level of 1 CFU/100 ml. Approximately one-third of the water systems contained fecal coliforms and/or fecal streptococci. Acinetobacter spp. were detected in 38% of the groundwater supplies at an arithmetic mean density of 8 CFU/100 ml and were present in 16% of the water supplies in the absence of total coliforms, posing some concern about the usefulness of total coliforms as indicators of the presence of this opportunistic pathogen. Slime production, a virulence factor for A. calcoaceticus, was not significantly different between well water isolates and clinical strains, suggesting some degree of pathogenic potential for strains isolated from groundwater. In addition, several Acinetobacter isolates were able to interfere with sheen production by some coliform bacteria on M-Endo medium, adding further to the possible significance of Acinetobacter spp. in groundwater supplies.

First report on Bacterial Diversity of Potable Spring water of Indian Himalayan Region

“…Rhodobacter changlensis which was isolated from snow sample of Changlapass in the Indian Himalaya (Anil Kumar et al ., 2007). Presence of Acinetobacter in rural drinking water systems dates back to 1989 (Bifulco et al ., 1989). Since then, there are several reports of its presence in drinking water sources (Towner, 2006; Krizova et al ., 2015; Radolfova-Krizova et al ., 2016) and transmission of drug-resistant Acientobacter through oral route (Umezawa et al ., 2015).…”

The role of surface copper content on biofilm formation by drinking water bacteria

“…and S. maltophilia were already described by the World Health Organization 41 as causative agents of infections in immunocompromised patients through tap water. Several other works described the isolation of Acinetobacter species [42][43][44] and S. maltophilia [45][46][47][48][49] from drinking water. Moreover, S. maltophilia is widespread in the environment and has an intrinsic multidrug resistance prole hindering infections treatment.…”

Environmentally Transmitted Pathogens

“…Acinetobacter has been isolated from 97% of natural surface water samples with a concentration of 0.1À100 cells/ml (Baumann, 1968). Bifulco et al (1989) isolated Acinetobacter from 38% of groundwater supplies at an arithmetic mean density of 8 CFU/100 ml in the positive samples.…”

“…Acinetobacter has been isolated from 5 to 92% of distribution water samples (LeChevallier et al, 1980;Bifulco et al, 1989). It comprised 1.0 to 5.5% of the heterotrophic plate count (HPC) flora in drinking water samples (Payment et al, 1988) with concentrations of 6À21 CFU/ml.…”