AFB diagnostics rely on a basic digestion-decontamination and an effective neutralization process to eliminate non-mycobacterial organisms from patient samples. Although an elevated pH will kill other organisms first, mycobacteria will quickly succumb if exposed to this basic environment for too long. Alpha-Tec Systems' Mycobacteriology System has dramatically improved the ability of laboratories to recover accurate positive AFB specimens and reduce the occurrence of contaminated / reprocessed samples by rigidly controlling pH throughout the specimen preparation process.

Industry standard reagents do not effectively control pH M/15 phosphate buffer is unable to effectively neutralize NaOH An elevated pH will begin killing AFB after 20 minutes of exposure Exposure during centrifugation can cause significant AFB die-off AFB die-off reduces the effectiveness of detection diagnostics

The Alpha-Tec Systems' Mycobacteriology System is the only available reagent set proven to effectively control pH and prevent mycobacterial die-off.