Abstract—The enterovirus and Poliovirus are frequently transmitted through contaminated water or food and encompass a serious threat to public health. The risk of infection is directly allied to inadequate vaccination, poor sanitation and overcrowding. Developing countries like Pakistan are at greater risk because of thickly populated communities along with unplanned sanitation system. Isolation of viruses from large water samples and their subsequent detection has always been challenging. PCR based detection of environmental samples is in frequent use. Major drawback of RT-PCR for direct amplification of the environmental samples is its reduced detection sensitivity due to presence of different naturally occurring organic and inorganic ions which interfere or inhibit the process of amplification. Current methods applied for the removal of these naturally occurring inhibitors involve multistep procedures that are not only costly; they may also result in the loss of virus for subsequent detection procedure. The present study primarily focused on the detection of polio virus in municipal water samples taken from highly populated areas of Lahore. The detection was based on a one step filtration procedure for the concentration of poliovirus from the drinking water and its subsequent application in RT-PCR based assay.

Index Terms—Drinking water, filtration, negatively charged membrane, viral RNA, RT-PCR.

Tahir Ahmad, Sadia Zahid and Muhammad Ashraf are with Atta-ur- Rahman School of Applied Biosciences, National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan (email: tahir@asab.nust.edu.pk).

 

Cite:Tahir Ahmad, Sadia Zahid, and Muhammad Ashraf, "Detection of Polio Virus in Municipal Water Bodies of Lahore, Pakistan," International Journal of Bioscience, Biochemistry and Bioinformatics vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 157-160, 2013.