Legionnaire's Disease

In the year 1976, there was a disease epidemic, and no one knew the cause of it. On August 2, reports of legionnaires feeling ill were sent to the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Then, the press named the illness, Legionnaire's disease because many legionnaires who went to the American Legion convention caught the disease. To determine the characteristics and the cause of Legionnaire's disease, the problem was handed over to to epidemiologists and laboratory investigators. To figure out what caused the Legionnaires’ disease, the epidemiologists had to do investigations on who caught the illness, where they caught it, and when. They discovered that among the 72 cases of Legionnaire’s disease, there were also people who were not at

They also learned that only family members that had become ill were also at the convention themselves. The possibility of the disease being spread by food and drink was then ruled out with this new information. Next, epidemiologists learned that legionnaires that were affected had been more outside than the unaffected legionnaires. To explain how it was possible for people to get the disease and not be at the convention, epidemiologist came up with an hypothesis that the disease was being spread through the air. The agent that caused the disease remained unknown, and to determine the agent that might have caused the disease, more research had to be done, and it also required epidemiologist to conduct experiments. An experiment was now required to figure out the agent responsible for the disease. First, scientists did intensive testing on specimen from patients and tissues taken from autopsies. Epidemiologists were able to learn that the cause of the agent was not any known microbial agent, so they hypothesized that the disease was probably caused by some unknown organism that

Legionnaires’ disease was able to be diagnosed within a few hours with direct fluorescent-antibody testing technique. They were also able to diagnose Legionnaires’ disease by using a procedure called enzyme-linked immunosorbent. This procedure allowed them to check antigens of the organism in the patient's’ serum and urine. With more research, scientists also learned that the disease was more common in middle-aged and elderly people. Men were also affected more than women. While looking back at the old cases, epidemiologist also learned that the illness was more frequent among travelers, construction workers, and people living near excavation sites or construction sites. They also found out that patients that had their beds close to the windows in buildings close to excavation site became ill. They hypothesized that the disease was from the soil, and when there were constructions the dust would help spread the disease through the air. Legionella pneumophila could also be found from water in cooling devices. After that, scientists began researching ways to decontaminate air-conditioning