AGBL partners with quality manufacturer (Biotica) to provide rapid detection of Legionella pneumophilain filtered water samples using Bioalarm Legionella Kit.

Why to detect Legionella pneumphilia?

Legionella pneumophila is a main cause of severe atypical pneumonia. It can be found in natural aquatic habitats and anthropogenic ecological niches, such as potable water systems, cooling towers and evaporative condensers. Its presence in this kind of habitat is a danger to human health. Its mortality is 12-15% but it can easily reach 30-50% in immuno-compromised patients. L. pneumophila specie is the most virulent pathogen Legionella species, responsible for 90-98% of the cases. It persists in artificial aquatic environments from where it can be transmitted to humans. L.pneumophila detection in environmental samples is an important challenge to public health.

Bioalarm Legionella Kit

The Bioalarm Legionella Kit is a fast and reliable test to detect the level of free-living Legionella pneumophila in filterable water samples in less than an hour. By which, it is possible to prevent harmful levels at risk environments for the human health.  It is based on the Legionellapneumophila selective capture by magnetic particles that present a capture antibody immobilized on the surface. Obtained Legionella pneumophila-particle complexes are retained by a magnet and then marked with an antibody after simple washing steps are to be ready for reading.

The kit is intended to provide a semi-quantitative meaure ofLegionella pneumophila concentration, by comparing the color of the test sample and the colors in the supplied color chart.

The Bioalarm kit analyzes Legionellapneumophilaviable cells because they keep full surface, where the antigens are present and accessible. The culture underestimates the organism concentration because it directs its analysis to the fraction of viable and cultivable (able to growing in laboratory medium). The PCR overestimates the organism concentration because it directs its analysis to the determination of nucleic acids, presents in both viable (cultivable or not), such as damaged or dead cells (not viable), including nucleic acid contaminants.

The Bioalarm Legionella kit has been validated by two external laboratories (ISO 17025 certified), both of them recognized by National Entity of Accreditation (ENAC).

Monitoring

The Legionellapneumophila can resist adverse conditions (low temperatures, lack of nutrients, biocidas presence, chloration, etc). In these situations it can enter a viable but non-culturable state and undetectable by culture. If the environmental conditions are favorable, can increase, in only 2-3 days, of a population of 10²cfu/L to one of 10⁴cfu/L. Therefore, it’s essential to identify the representative point of each installation (tanks, cisterns, showers, taps, towers, condensers, baths, swimming pools, fountains, etc), to establish effective prevention plans that include sampling frequency, the appropriate determinations number and the applicable decision criteria, established by a prevention expert.

Added value

Isolation of the bacteria by culture technique in selective media is the conventional method used to detect Legionella pneumophila (norm ISO 11731). However, this method requires long incubation times due to the slow growth rate of the bacterium (time to result is (10-14 days). Then, the obtained results represent past information over the Legionella presence in our installation. Moreover, culture do not permits the detection of viable but non-culturable bacteria (VBNC), what still represents a public health hazard, and it is difficult to isolate legionellae in samples containing high levels of other microbiota. In this context, fast detection of Legionella pneumophilaat risk environments is needed as a routine control, for example at cooling towers among others, and also in outbreaks. Kit can be used as fast screening method to take opportune actions, before isolating bacterium by culture technique. Fast diagnostic tests are essential to take both corrective and preventive measures, with a periodically verification. A fast and reliable test is a key issue for the surveillance of the quality control and the prevention of the Legionella outbreaks.

For available products and quotation request, please refer to our products list (Food Safety> products > Biotica). 

Fore more details about Bioalarm product, please refer to  Biotica website.

About Biotica, Bioquimica Analitica