Evaluation of different detector types in measurement of ATP bioluminescence compared to colony counting method for measuring bacterial burden of hospital surfaces

PLoS One. 2019 Sep 6;14(9):e0221665. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0221665. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

The ATP bioluminescence method has been increasingly employed as a rapid, on-site detection method in nosocomial infections control. In this study, we used a paired design of monitoring methods, the colony counting method (C) and the ATP bioluminescence method, to evaluate environmental surfaces after disinfection. The ATP bioluminescence method included three detector types (B, P, and N). Every surface after disinfection was performed by combining two types of monitoring methods or detectors. There was no statistically significant difference in theATP content per surface siteamong samples from intensive care units (ICUs)and internal medicine wards using B (p = 0.435) and P (p = 0.260). According to the Spearman's rank correlation coefficients, with the exception of the correlation between the ATP content values detected by B and P, the correlation between the values generated by the remaining methods/detectors was weak or lacking, whereasthe differences between the detectors were statistically significant. Therefore, there are differences between the ATP bioluminescence method and the colony counting method, also between different detectors.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study
  • Evaluation Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adenosine Triphosphate / metabolism*
  • Bacteria / isolation & purification*
  • Bacteria / metabolism*
  • Bacterial Physiological Phenomena*
  • Colony Count, Microbial
  • Disinfection
  • Hospitals*
  • Humans
  • Luminescent Measurements*

Substances

  • Adenosine Triphosphate

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Public Health Project of Wuhan Health Bureau [No. WG 15D08] to HX. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.