Legionnaire's
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Friday January 9 6:28 PM EST
Sauna Linked To Fatal Legionnaire's
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Researchers in the Netherlands have traced six
cases of Legionnaire's disease -- two of them fatal -- to a sauna.
One of the fatalities was a women who had had a kidney transplant and
died 10 days after frequenting the sauna. The other fatality was a
59-year-old man who had no history of immunosuppression, the researchers
report.
In another case, a 64-year-old man was diagnosed with Legionnaire's
disease after regularly using a footbath in the sauna, according to a
letter in this week's edition of The Lancet. Testing revealed that his
disease was caused by the same Legionella pneumophila strain as found in
the woman who died. The man was treated and recovered from acute
pneumonia caused by L. pneumophila.
L. pneumophila is an organism that thrives in stagnant water. The
initial symptoms are flu-like, including high fever, chills, muscle
aches, and headache.
J.W. Den Boer of the Municipal Health Service in Haarlem, the
Netherlands, and colleagues at other sites in Haarlem, report that water
from the air-perfused footbath was tested and found to contain the same
strain of L. pneumophila.
In light of the cases, the sauna operators changed the hot-water
installation of the facility to prevent water from standing or flowing
too slowly. The water also is tested regularly.
"It has been suggested that regular sauna bathing reduces the incidence
of certain infections, although our report describes the first
documented cases of lethal sauna-associated Legionnaire's disease, and
confirms existing knowledge of long-lasting spread of L. pneumophila due
to a persistent source of infection," the researchers report. SOURCE:
The Lancet (1998;351:114)
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