Descrição
Part of the reason for rejecting aquatic environments as possible vectors for the transmission of Helicobacter
pylori has been the preference of this microorganism to inhabit the human stomach and hence use a direct
oral-oral route for transmission. On the other hand, most enteric bacterial pathogens are well known for being
able to use water as an environmental reservoir. In this work, we have exposed 13 strains of seven different
Helicobacter spp. (both gastric and enterohepatic) to water and tracked their survival by standard plating
methods and membrane integrity assessment. The influence of different plating media and temperatures and
the presence of light on recovery was also assessed. There was good correlation between cultivability and
membrane integrity results (Pearson’s correlation coefficient = 0.916), confirming that the culture method
could reliably estimate differences in survival among different Helicobacter spp. The species that survived the
longest in water was H. pylori (>96 h in the dark at 25°C), whereas H. felis appeared to be the most sensitive
to water (<6 h). A hierarchical cluster analysis demonstrated that there was no relationship between the
enterohepatic nature of Helicobacter spp. and an increased time of survival in water. This work assesses for the
first time the survival of multiple Helicobacter spp., such has H. mustelae, H. muridarum, H. felis, H. canadensis,
H. pullorum, and H. canis, in water under several conditions and concludes that the roles of water in
transmission between hosts are likely to be similar for all these species, whether enterohepatic or not.
; Almeida, Carina 
