ORIGINAL PAPER Molecular identification of Hartmannella vermiformis and Vannella persistens from man-made recreational water environments, Tehran, Iran Mahdieh Nazar & Ali Haghighi & Niloofar Taghipour & Antonio Ortega-Rivas & Farid Tahvildar-Biderouni & Ehsan Nazemalhosseini Mojarad & Mohammad Eftekhar Received: 2 February 2012 / Accepted: 19 March 2012 / Published online: 4 April 2012 # Springer-Verlag 2012 Abstract A survey was conducted on man-made recrea- tional water located in different regions of Tehran, Iran to detect the free-living amoebae present in ponds and foun- tains of parks and squares. Fifty water samples from 22 municipal districts of Tehran were screened for free-living amoebae and identified by morphological characters and polymerase chain reaction amplification. Amoebae detected were identified as Hartmannella vermiformis (12 %) and Vannella persistens (4 %), which are the first reports of these two amoebas in recreational water environments of Iran. Since, H. vermiformis, which is highly similar to strains serving as hosts for Legionella pneumophila, is a common component of the microbial community in fresh surface water. Although Vannella spp. is not proved to be pathogenic itself, they are capable of harboring pathogenic intracellular organisms. Due to some reports related to pathogenicity of these amoebas, the particular hazard related to these micro- organisms should be taken into account in the encounter with drinking and washing in these waters. We recommend control strategies based on physical removal rather than on disinfec- tion to be adopted where necessary. Introduction Free-living amoebae (FLA) are distributed in a variety of artificial and natural niches including water, sand, soil, dust, air, and various moist environments; thus, human exposure to these ubiquitous protozoan is common (Schuster and Visvesvara 2004; Khan 2006). Several Acanthamoeba spe- cies have been isolated from the brain, lungs, skin, and cornea of infected individuals (Visvesvara et al. 2007). The genus Hartmannella is characterized as limax amoeba, which has a distribution in soil and water. Hartmannella vermiformis has direct and indirect public health attention. It has been found in the eye, nasal mucosa, and cerebrospinal fluid of a patient (Centeno et al. 1996). Hartmannella as well as Acanthamoeba were recovered from environmental sources such as artificial lake, soil, river, and spring water (Tsvetkova et al. 2004). There is a report of the presence of FLA such as Hartmannella and Vannella in sewer outflows, municipal wastewater treatment plant release site, in James River, Virginia (Ettinger et al. 2003). The prevalence of FLA Hartmannella, Acanthamoeba, or Vahlkampfia in US household water can provide a focus for prevention of amoeba-associated illnesses. FLA are commonplace inhab- itants of household water in this sample as they are in the environment (Stockman et al. 2011). While the result of some studies does not prove that Hartmannella is a patho- gen, it provides important evidence supporting the thesis that it causes keratitis by demonstrating that its ability to produce a cytopathic effect on keratocytes in vitro is similar in magnitude and mechanism to that of the known pathogen Acanthamoeba castellanii (Kinnear 2003). M. Nazar : A. Haghighi : N. Taghipour : F. Tahvildar-Biderouni : M. Eftekhar Department of Medical Parasitology and Mycology, School of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran M. Nazar (*) : A. Ortega-Rivas University Institute of Tropical Diseases and Public Health of the Canary Islands, University of La Laguna, San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain e-mail: a.azinnazar@yahoo.com E. N. Mojarad Research Center for Gastroenterology and Liver Diseases, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Parasitol Res (2012) 111:835–839 DOI 10.1007/s00436-012-2906-x