Hubert Hilbi Editor

2013

Legionnaires’ disease is a potentially fatal pneumonia primarily affecting elderly and immunocompromised persons. The disease is caused by the ubiquitous environmental bacterium Legionella pneumophila, which was first identified more than 35 years ago in the aftermath of a pneumonia epidemic that swept through a convent of the American Legion in Philadelphia, USA. The water-borne bacteria are inhaled via contaminated aerosols, resist degradation by alveolar macrophages, and trigger a fulminant pneumonia. Direct inhalation represents the sole route of infection with L. pneumophila; person-to-person transmission does not occur.