Legionnaires' disease is a severe respiratory disease that is estimated to cause between 8,000 and 18,000 hospitalizations each year, though the exact burden is unknown due to under-utilization of diagnostic testing. Although Legionella pneumophila is the most common species detected in clinical cases (80-90%), other species have also been reported to cause disease. However, little is known abo...

Patients with Legionnaires pneumonia frequently present with neurologic abnormalities but normal neuroimaging findings. We present a case of a healthy 52-year-old man presenting with severe Legionella pneumonia and a unique constellation of focal neurologic deficits including bowel and bladder incontinence, hemiparesis, and ataxia with progression to somnolence. A transient lesion was identifie...

Sera of 24 patients with an unexplained pneumonia were tested for the presence of antibodies against the Legionnaires' disease bacterium. Fifteen patients had positive serology. The series comprised 12 male and three female patients ranging in age from 17 to 66 years (mean, 51.1 years). All of the patients had a high fever, little or no sputum production, and radiographic evidence of pneumonia....

Legionnaires’ disease, particularly that caused by non-pneumophila species, is notoriously underdiagnosed [1, 2]. We recently found a four-fold increase in case detection of Legionnaires’ disease through a laboratory-initiated strategy of systematic PCR testing for Legionella species of all lower respiratory specimens from patients with pneumonia or immune compromised status [3]. This strategy ...

Counterimmunoelectrophoresis (CIE) was found to be a rapid, specific method for detecting circulating antibodies to Legionella pneumophila, the aetiologic agent of Legionnaires' disease in human sera. Optimum conditions for performing the test are given. Better precipitin lines are observed when the gel support is neutral, and a result may be obtained in 90 to 180 minutes. Comparison of results...

A commercial DNA probe kit (Gen-probe) for the detection of rRNA from legionellae was evaluated for its accuracy in diagnosing Legionnaires' disease in 167 patients with pneumonia. The test was performed on freshly obtained clinical respiratory tract samples. Cultures and direct immunofluorescence antibody (DFA) staining of the samples and serological tests were performed simultaneously for all...