The Castellón firm Biótica, located in espaitec (the Science, Technology and Business Park of the Universitat Jaume I), has presented its Legipid-MP4 test (rapid test to prevent and control the living Legionella bacterium in water) at the 12 Spanish Congress on Environmental Health held recently in Granada. The technician in charge of Biótica, Guillermo Rodríguez, presented a communication to over 300 health and environmental professionals on the “Impact of the rapid detection of the living Legionella bacterium” on the implementation and efficiency of control and prevention measures for legionnaire’s disease in Spain.
During this presentation, Rodríguez explained to attending professionals the minimum points that a rapid test must fulfil for the purpose of detecting this infectious bacterium form that can cause very serious diseases. Biótica’s presented a method to detect the living Legionella bacterium in just 1 hour. This new technology aims to save lives rapidly and at a very competitive cost. “Among the many advantages that Legipid-MP4 offers, it not only provides information about the presence or absence of the Legionella bacterium, but also identifies the level at which the bacterium is found, thus enabling decisions to be made on the most suitable corrective measure in record times”, stated Carlos Ferrer, the laboratory director.
In the last few months, the development of techniques to measure the living Legionella bacterium in water has increased. Thus the importance of the rapid tests used is for them to be validated by an independent third party with the acknowledged technical competence for this purpose. During this congress, the need to incorporate rapid, reliable and validated tests as set out in the new Royal Decree on preventing this bacterium, still in the draft stage, was stressed. The Legipid-MP4 test of Biótica already has prestigious international AOAC certification.
