Bactochem Testimony about MICA Legionella

Experience with MICA

“My experience with MICA began at 03/21 in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic,

After I tried RT- PCR solution for rapid legionella test and failed to succeed with it, since there were a big gap in results between the ISO and the RT PCR, so I looked for another method that will be reliable for our lab.

I discovered Diamidex – MICA legionella,

We conducted a full validation on domestic water, cooling towers and Jacuzzi water.

We challenged the water by adding different concentration of Legionella pneumophila into the water  (low and high).

In addition, we challenged the water by adding “interfering bacteria” such as Legionella spp and Pseudomonas aeruginosa which is known as a biological inhibitor for the growth of Legionella pneumophila.

All the tests that we conducted were compared to the ISO 11731:2017, the differences between the results were not more than 0.3 log.

I found that the MICA method is very accurate, can discover micro colonies that not necessarily will see on the GVPC agar in the ISO method.

A big advantage of this method is the fact that the upper limit of the quantification is 2,000,000 CFU/L, without the need of doing many membrane filtration.

The MICA can count the colonies on the membrane in any given volume of filtration and can calculate the final results per liter.

The fact that the method is reversible, provide a high reliability to work with the MICA – unlike other method such as RT-PCR,

The kit of MICA contains all the reagents that needed for the process, including distilled water. The scanning of each barcode of reagent provide a full traceability, which is very important to any laboratory.

After the reading of MICA, we returned the membrane to the GVPC plate and incubate for more days – in that way we actually “returned” to the ISO method and could compare the results to the MICA.

The MICA instrument is friendliness to the user and provide a full instructions to use in all the steps for the laboratory worker.

I have to mention the excellent service from Diamidex and the support of the very professional people who accompanied us through the all process of validation.

They adjusted the MICA method to our needs and answered very fast to our questions – most of the time within 24 hours (by phone and Emails)

Finally, I found the method very reliable, suitable and comfortable to use for all, and most important a rapid proven test for the enumeration of Legionella pneumophila.”