AAAR 31st Annual Conference
October 8-12, 2012
Hyatt Regency Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Applying Real-Time Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction to Monitor the Airborne Streptococcus Pneumonia in a Daycare Center
MIAO-CHING CHI, Lin Meng-Chih, Chen Min-Li, Department of Respiratory Care, Chang Gung University of Sci
Abstract Number: 302 Working Group: Health Related Aerosols
Abstract Streptococcus pneumoniae causes a range of diseases such as pneumonia, otitis media, arthritis, sinusitis, septicemia, and meningitis. In order to prevent the health of young children and older adults from infection, it is important to evaluate the environments at a high risk exposed to S. pneumoniae. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop an optimized real-time qPCR method for analyzing the concentrations of S. pneumoniae. To optimize the analytical conditions for the real-time qPCR, several factors including detection limit, extraction time (30 sec, 60 sec, 120 sec, and 180 sec), storage temperature (4 degree centigrade, -20 degree centigrade, and -80 degree centigrade), and storage time (0 day, 3 day, and 7 day) were determined. Aerosol samples in a daycare center were collected for examining the concentrations of S. pneumoniae in use of the determined real-time qPCR. The results indicated the detection limit of this method was as low as 6.1copies/micro-liter with a value of correlation coefficient 0.999. In terms of extraction time, the optimal S. pneumoniae DNA recovery was one minute. Moreover, the results of this study indicated that storage in low temperature could reduce the biological activity of S. pneumoniae and damage its DNA. Therefore, it is suggested to analyze the samples immediately after air sampling. The indoor concentrations of airborne bacteria, fungus, and S. pneumoniae were measured in the range from 6.64×10$^2 CFU/m$^3 to 2.36×10$^3 CFU/m$^3, 5.51×10$^2 CFU/m$^3 to 4.02×10$^3 CFU/m$^3, and 9.62×10$^3 copies/m$^3 to 2.38×10$^4 copies/m$^3, respectively. Conclusions: The results showed the existence of airborne S. pneumoniae indoors. In the future, real-time qPCR method can be applied to monitor the airborne S. pneumoniae for assessing its relationship with the prevalence of nasopharyngeal carriage.