Isolamento e caracterização morfológica de Acanthamoeba spp em caixas de água de edifícios residenciais

Acanthamoeba spp, one of the genera that make up the group of free-living amoebae, is the causative agent of amoebic keratitis and granulomatous encephalitis, diseases associated with the use of contact lenses, deficiency in personal hygiene and exposure to contaminated water. The objective of this work was to isolate evolutionary forms of Acanthamoeba spp in drinking water in a residential condominium in the Nieves neighborhood in the city of Bogota, Colombia. Ten samples were collected in total, the technique employed was membrane filtration and cultivation on non-nutritive agar medium with a suspension of Escherichia coli to ensure the development of the amoeba. As a positive control, a strain of Acanthamoeba spp was used and a negative control was used for sterile distilled water. The morphological characteristics and size of the evolutionary forms were determined by conventional microscopy, facilitating the classification in the groups described by Pussard and Pons. From a sample, 5 trophozoites and 6 cysts corresponding to groups II and III respectively were identified, indicating the presence of several species of Acanthamoeba. The positive sample corresponds to a tank that has never been cleaned, which was confirmed by the condominium administrator, in violation of the sanitation regulations for drinking water tanks. Concluding that the bad sanitary conditions favor the development of this amoeba and it is necessary to identify the species together with the genotype to correlate the infectious capacity.