Critical evaluation of commercially available rapid tests for cyanobacterial toxin detection in surface water
Start Date
23-5-2022 12:15 PM
End Date
23-5-2022 12:30 PM
Abstract
Dutch water managers are becoming more aware of the need of assessing the risk of cyanobacterial blooms by analyzing toxin concentrations in surface waters. However, they lack specialized analytical equipment to rapidly detect the major toxin groups. Therefore, reliable and rapid tests for microcystins, anatoxins, cylindrospermopsins and saxitoxins detection in the field or the lab are needed. We critically evaluated 6 commercially available field tests (Lateral Flow Devices, LFDs) and 7 lab tests (ELISAs).
Most ELISAs performed acceptably in terms of accuracy and precision. The saxitoxin ELISA had a low cross reactivity for some congeners, resulting in lower performance on these criteria. Some of the LFDs lacked the option of on site cell lysis, making it difficult to estimate the total toxin content. Also, some LFDs structurally gave false negative results during the first experiments. Finally, some had a handling time of more than one hour, which makes routine analysis in the field expensive.
In conclusion, for each of the four tested toxin groups, a suitable ELISA was commercially available, most LFDs however had some serious drawbacks. Also, testing for multiple toxin groups with ELISAs or LFDs is time consuming and expensive, a multiplex test would therefore be preferred.
Critical evaluation of commercially available rapid tests for cyanobacterial toxin detection in surface water
Dutch water managers are becoming more aware of the need of assessing the risk of cyanobacterial blooms by analyzing toxin concentrations in surface waters. However, they lack specialized analytical equipment to rapidly detect the major toxin groups. Therefore, reliable and rapid tests for microcystins, anatoxins, cylindrospermopsins and saxitoxins detection in the field or the lab are needed. We critically evaluated 6 commercially available field tests (Lateral Flow Devices, LFDs) and 7 lab tests (ELISAs).
Most ELISAs performed acceptably in terms of accuracy and precision. The saxitoxin ELISA had a low cross reactivity for some congeners, resulting in lower performance on these criteria. Some of the LFDs lacked the option of on site cell lysis, making it difficult to estimate the total toxin content. Also, some LFDs structurally gave false negative results during the first experiments. Finally, some had a handling time of more than one hour, which makes routine analysis in the field expensive.
In conclusion, for each of the four tested toxin groups, a suitable ELISA was commercially available, most LFDs however had some serious drawbacks. Also, testing for multiple toxin groups with ELISAs or LFDs is time consuming and expensive, a multiplex test would therefore be preferred.