Optimization of pre- treatments with Propidium Monoazide and PEMAX™ before real-time quantitative PCR for detection and quantification of viable Helicobacter pylori cells.

Accurate detection of H. pylori in different environmental and clinical samples is essential for public health strtdudies. Now, a big effort is being made to design PCR methodologies that allow for the detection of viable and viable but non-culturable (VBNC) H. pylori cells, by achieving complete exclusion of dead cells amplification signals. The use of DNA intercalating dyes has been proposed. However, its efficacy is still not well determined. In this study, we aimed to test the suitability of PMA and PEMAX™ dyes used prior to qPCR for only detecting viable cells of H. pylori. Their efficiency was evaluated with cells submitted to different disinfection treatments and confirmed by the absence of growth on culture media and by LIVE/DEAD counts. Our results indicated that an incubation period of 5 min for both, PMA and PEMAX™, did not affect viable cells. Our study also demonstrated that results obtained by using intercalating dyes may vary depending on the cell stress conditions. In all dead cell's samples, both PMA and PEMAX™ pre-qPCR treatments decreased the amplification signal (>103 Genomic Units (GU)), although none of them allowed for its disappearance confirming that intercalating dyes, although useful for screening purposes, cannot be considered as universal viability markers. To investigate the applicability of the method specifically to detect H. pylori cells in environmental samples, PMA-qPCR was performed on samples containing the different morphological and viability states that H. pylori can acquire in environment. The optimized PMA-qPCR methodology showed to be useful to detect mostly (but not only) viable forms, regardless the morphological state of the cell.