The 2021 AOAC Annual Meeting & Exposition

Emerging Topics and Technologies

Remote sensing of viable Legionella in waters

Authors: Inma Solís Andrés / Guillermo Rodríguez Albalat
Speaker: Inma Solís Andrés

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The 2021 AOAC Annual Meeting & Exposition Legionellosis
Emerging Topics and Technologies PRE-COVID
Legionella bacteria is one of the top five causes of bacterial pneumonia
in the U.S but usually the source of infection is not obvious.

SOURCE: CDC U.S. • It is a disease in progress that kills 1 in 10

people who get it (1 in 4 in hospital).
10000
Before the Pandemic • It is a severe pneumonia, underdiagnosed,
contracted by inhaling aerosols with
Legionella bacteria from the water of facilities.
1000
• People aged 45 years or older and/or with
1995 2018 basic pathologies are more sensitive.

People sensitive to pneumonia (COVID-19 patients) are on the rise

(Walker J, 2018; Clopper BR, 2021; Cassell K, 2021; Ferrer JA, 2021)
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The 2021 AOAC Annual Meeting & Exposition Legionellosis
Emerging Topics and Technologies POST-COVID-19
Reopening buildings after prolonged shutdown or reduced operation
can create Legionella risk
Stagnant or standing water in a plumbing system can
increase the proliferation of Legionella but also its transition
to states viables but non-culturables.
Delayed detection of viable Legionella could translate
into increases in transmission.
Rapid detection of viable Legionella would be very
useful for risk assessment and water safety plans.

It is in this space of risk assessment in the facility that a

rapid technique is relevant: speeding up detection helps
effective prevention.
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The 2021 AOAC Annual Meeting & Exposition
Emerging Topics and Technologies

Rapid techniques overcome the drawbacks of culture based methods

With a preventive purpose, they cover what the culture method does not
reach because of its limitations for that purpose:

Interferences by accompanying microbiota (positive or negative)

It does not detect the non-culturable germ even if it may be viable and infective
Slow (10-14 days of incubation)
No guarantee of count anywhere in the measurement range

Yu, 1990; Lee TC, 1993; McNally C, 2000; Bentham, 2000; Stoodley, 2001; Wiedenmann, 2001; Lee, 2002; Prats, 2002; Benin A, 2002; Akira
Ono, 2003; Lück, 2004; Cotuk, 2005; Ausina V, 2005; Bartram, 2007; Chang, 2007; Allegra S, 2008; Jespersen S, 2009; Pécastaings, 2010;
Yang G, 2010; Allegra S, 2011; Giao , 2011; CW Svarrer, 2012; Borges, 2012; Amin, 2013; Robertson, 2014; Shen, 2017; Rucinski SL, 2018;
Dietersdorfer E, 2018; Valciņa O, 2019; Malasita N, 2020; Cullom A, 2020; Beauté J, 2020; Chambers ST, 2021.
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 The 2021 AOAC Annual Meeting & Exposition
Emerging Topics and Technologies

Legipid is a test for the determination of viable Legionella in water in

1 hour, validated and certified by AOAC-RI

1Akira et al., 2003; Chang et al., 2007; Shen et al., 2017/2 Husssong et al., 1987;
Rodríguez G et al, 2012/ Albalat G. 2014 Cotuket al., 2005; Amin et al., 2013; Giao et al., 2011/3 Díaz-Flores et al., 2015;
Walker JT et al., 2021; Toplitsch et al., 2021 4
 The 2021 AOAC Annual Meeting & Exposition
Emerging Topics and Technologies

IMS: integrity of the outer envelope (virulence traits)

Molecular velcro

“
Immunomagnetic separation is a method not
affected by competing microbial flora or inhibitors
present in the sample, and can show success of
biocide treatment, as it detects only viable
Legionella and would, therefore, be very useful
for risk assessment and water safety plans.”
Toplitsch, D. et al. C. Comparison of Updated Methods for
Legionella Detection in Environmental Water Samples. Int. J.
Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 5436.

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The 2021 AOAC Annual Meeting & Exposition
Emerging Topics and Technologies

Quick methods allow you to implement the preventive function.

in vivo → Changes in sample and target → in vitro

Sampling Transport 1-2 days Manual off-line análisis (10-15 days)

Timely
Step

Why be late
Customer assumes the cost of not knowing what is going on in
everywhere? their facility or when to act (stop, sanction, discredit, treatments,
shut-down, re-testing, medical costs, absenteeism costs,….)

Early detection Customer anticipates the problem and avoids the associated costs.
Remote DATA
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 The 2021 AOAC Annual Meeting & Exposition
Emerging Topics and Technologies

Legiolab® and the Internet of Things

Digitalized Advanced Systems for water risk management

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The 2021 AOAC Annual Meeting & Exposition
Emerging Topics and Technologies

Conclusions

Applying the biosensing technologies on the Internet of things to

Timely steps on
environmental monitoring will greatly improve the speed and accuracy
facilities
of microbial risk assessment, with a preventive purpose.

In view of the current situation of Legionnaire's disease progress and the

1 drawbacks of the existing manual off-line microbial data collection, we propose a
scheme of online Legionella biosensing system for waters based on IoT.

Through the Internet of things combined with Legiolab®, people can obtain a large
2 amount of reliable real-time information on time, in place, and over viable and
virulent Legionella, making it possible the optimal development of environmental
health protection.

Wireless sensor network has the advantages of easy installation and low cost, so
Health protection 3
microbial monitoring through the Internet of things is the future development trend.

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The 2021 AOAC Annual Meeting & Exposition
Emerging Topics and Technologies

Thank you
+34 964 108 131
info@biotica.es

inma.solis@biotica.es
info@biotica.es
guiller@biotica.es
inma.solis@biotica.es
guiller@biotica.es
www.biotica.es

www.biotica.es