Legionnaires’ Disease Outbreak in Murcia, Spain

Autor: Ana García-Fulgueiras, Carmen Navarro, Daniel Fenoll, José García, Paulino González-Diego, Teresa Jiménez-Buñuales, Miguel Rodriguez, Rosa Lopez, Francisco Pacheco, Joaquín Ruiz, Manuel Segovia, Beatriz Baladrón, Carmen Pelaz
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2003
Předmět:
Zdroj: Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol 9, Iss 8, Pp 915-921 (2003)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1080-6040
1080-6059
DOI: 10.3201/eid0908.030337
Popis: An explosive outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease occurred in Murcia, Spain, in July 2001. More than 800 suspected cases were reported; 449 of these cases were confirmed, which made this the world’s largest outbreak of the disease reported to date. Dates of onset for confirmed cases ranged from June 26 to July 19 , with a case-fatality rate of 1%. The epidemic curve and geographic pattern from the 600 completed epidemiologic questionnaires indicated an outdoor point-source exposure in the northern part of the city. A case-control study matching 85 patients living outside the city of Murcia with two controls each was undertaken to identify the outbreak source; the epidemiologic investigation implicated the cooling towers at a city hospital. An environmental isolate from these towers with an identical molecular pattern as the clinical isolates was subsequently identified and supported that epidemiologic conclusion.
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