Legionnaire's diseaseIn 1977, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, first announced* that they had sufficient laboratory evidence to implicate a bacterium as the cause of Legionnaire's Disease, now named Legionella pneumophila. An outbreak of this disease in Philadelphia in 1976, largely among people attending a state convention of the American Legion, led to the name "Legionnaires' Disease." After the bacterium causing the illness was named, the name of the illness was changed to legionellosis. The scientific paper describing the isolation of the bacterium as published 1 Dec 1977 in The New England Journal of Medicine.[Image: Legionella pneumophila multiplying inside a cultured human lung fibroblast. Multiple intracellular bacilli, including dividing bacilli, are visible in longitudinal and cross section. Transmission electron micrograph.] |
