Review of recent advances in improved lateral flow immunoassay for the detection of pathogenic Escherichia coli O157:H7 in foods

The incidence of foodborne diseases has continuingly increased over the years and resulted in public health problem globally. Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli O157:H7 (E. coli O157:H7) is a human pathogen that causes diarrhea and hemorrhagic colitis. E. coli O157:H7 can be found in various foods. It is important to detect this foodborne pathogen to provide safe food supply. A lot of methods, for example, culture and PCR-based test, used to detect foodborne pathogens are laborious and time consuming. Hence, a variety of methods have been developed for rapid, simple and reliable detection of E. coli O157:H7 as it is required in many food analyses. Lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA) are advantageous over conventional detection methods in terms of their rapidity and simplicity for end user, especially the LFIA can be developed as the strip test for on-site point-of-care test (POCT) products. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs; colloid gold) are the most commonly used labels in the LFIA for the visual analysis, however, there are still several limitations that restrict their applications of traditional LFIA. Therefore, recent reports on improved LFIA for E. coli O157:H7 detection in foods are continuously reported. This review intends to provide these recent advances in improved LFIA methods for the detection of E. coli O157:H7 in foods.