Currently there is no detailed, internationally agreed protocol defined to evaluate antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) for Legionella pneumophila (required to establish epidemiological cut-off value or "ECOFF" boundaries); therefore, antimicrobial resistance in these isolates cannot be defined. AST methods utilising media containing activated charcoal as an ingredient, to enable Legionella growth, are unreliable as noted in an internationally authored opinion paper and a new gold standard is required. Here we define a detailed protocol for broth microdilution (BMD) using defined cell culture collection-deposited control reference strains (Philadelphia-1 and Knoxville-1) as well as two accessible reference strains with moderately (lpeAB-carrying) and markedly (23S rRNA mutation-carrying) elevated azithromycin minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: infections resurged globally in 2023-2024 after a three-year decline during the COVID-19 pandemic. We explored the incidence and severity of infections in children and adolescents before, during, and after the pandemic.
Methods: This nationwide, population-based cohort study included all Danish children and adolescents aged 0-17 years with a positive PCR test from May 1, 2016, to April 30, 2024.
J Water Health
September 2022
Legionnaires' disease is a serious health risk among the elderly. Water systems in care homes are therefore of particular interest. We investigated the levels of culturable Legionella in the hot water systems in care homes in two Danish municipalities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground respiratory infections are transmitted by aerosol and droplets in close contact.AimWe investigated global incidence after implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) against COVID-19 in March 2020.MethodsWe surveyed detections from laboratories and surveillance systems (national or regional) across the world from 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021 and compared them with cases from corresponding months between 2017 and 2020.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
February 2022
Denmark has one of the highest Legionnaires' disease notification rates within Europe, averaging 4.7 cases per 100,000 population annually (2017 to 2020). The relatively high incidence of disease is not uniform across the country, and approximately 70% of all domestically acquired cases in Denmark are caused by (LP) strains that are considered less virulent.
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