Biossegurança no controle da infecção hospitalar: desenvolvimento de imunossensor impedimétrico para detecção de Staphylococcus aureus em áreas críticas hospitalares

Abstract

The Biosafety is a very important tool for the Control of Hospital Infection establishing through methods, techniques and standards, measures to be adopted in order to prevent and control risks that may contribute to hospital infection. This work reports the development of an impedimetric immunosensor for detection of pathogenic bacteria, specifically Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), in hospital critical areas (Surgical Centers and Intensive Care Units) to contribute to the hospital infection control. Different parameters were studied: direct immobilization of protein A of S. aureus on the surface of the transducer or the working electrode (screen-printed electrode - SPE), immobilization of protein A on SPEs modified with self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of cystamine (CYS) and glutaraldehyde (GA); different incubation times and dilutions were used for both modifiers as for protein A and anti- S. aureus antibodies; blocking with bovine serum albumin (BSA) and immunoassay (antigen-antibody reaction, Ag-Ab). Electrochemical techniques (electrochemical impedance spectroscopy - EIS and cyclic voltammetry - CV) and non electrochemical (microscopy) were used for the characterization and construction of the immunosensor. The impedance measurements and cyclic voltammetry showed the good results with self-assembled monolayer of cystamine 2 x 10-2 mol L-1 and glutaraldehyde 2,5% with incubation periods of 2 and 1h, respectively; immobilization of protein A 1:20 (tincub = 12 h) and anti-S. aureus monoclonal Ab (tincub = 3 h) and step blocking with 0.5% BSA (tincub = 1 h). For the Ag-Ab interaction S. aureus ATCC - 6535 strains (analyte) were used and incubation for 30 min. The immunosensor developed has proven to be an effective method for monitoring of S. aureus in a hospital environment and that can be applied as an indicative tool of the effectiveness of the standards and procedures applied to the control of hospital infection.