Multiple types of Legionella pneumophila serogroup 6 in a hospital heated-water system associated with sporadic infections

Five sporadic cases of nosocomial Legionnaires' disease were documented from 1989 to 1997 in a hospital in northern Italy. Two of them, which occurred in a 75-year-old man suffering from ischemic cardiopathy and in an 8-year-old girl suffering from acute leukemia, had fatal outcomes. Legionella pneumophila serogroup 6 was isolated from both patients and from hot-water samples taken at different sites in the hospital. These facts led us to consider the possibility that a single clone of L. pneumophila serogroup 6 had persisted in the hospital environment for 8 years and had caused sporadic infections. Comparison of clinical and environmental strains by monoclonal subtyping, macrorestriction analysis (MRA), and arbitrarily primed PCR (AP-PCR) showed that the strains were clustered into three different epidemiological types, of which only two types caused infection. An excellent correspondence between the MRA and AP-PCR results was observed, with both techniques having high discriminatory powers. However, it was not possible to differentiate the isolates by means of ribotyping and analysis of rm operon polymorphism. Environmental strains that antigenically and chromosomally matched the infecting organism were present at the time of infection in hot-water samples taken from the ward where the patients had stayed. Interpretation of the temporal sequence of events on the basis of the typing results for clinical and environmental isolates enabled the identification of the ward where the patients became infected and the modes of transmission of Legionella infection. The long-term persistence in the hot-water system of different clones of L. pneumophila serogroup 6 indicates that repeated heat-based control measures were ineffective in eradicating the organism.