Cryptosporidium Parvum Oocyst Recovery Using Immunomagnetizable Separation

Publisher Summary This chapter illustrates a that describes Cryptosporidium parvum oocyst recovery using immunomagnetizable separation. This study compared the ability of two commercially available Immunomagnetic Separation (IMS) kits: Crytpo-Scan IMS; ImmuCell Corporation, Portland, Maine, USA (kit A) and Dynabeads Sinti-Cryptosporidium; Dynal A.S., Oslo, Norway (kit B): to recover Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts from clean and turbid water concentrates. Both oocyst isolate and water concentrate composition influenced kit performance. A mix of factors, including antibody affinity and isotype, oocyst epitope expression, and the physicochemical environment can affect epitope-paratope interaction. Interaction is most stable with high affinity antibodies. IMS is a useful technique and can be readily associated to in vitro culture and immunological/molecular methods for the specific enumeration as well as species identification of small numbers of Cryptosporidium oocysts.