Girolamini L, Pascale MR, Mazzotta M, Spiteri S, Marino F, Salaris S, Grottola A, Orsini M, Cristino S. Combining Traditional and Molecular Techniques Supports the Discovery of a Novel Legionella Species During Environmental Surveillance in a Healthcare Facility. Front Microbiol. 2022 Jun 13;13:900936. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.900936. PMID: 35770167; PMCID: PMC9234573.
Highlights
- The difficulty in Legionella isolation, identification and typing leads to underestimating human infection.
- The special attention given to Legionella pneumophilaleads to an underestimation of the prevalence and risk of infection for other species.
- This study describes the isolation of two strains, named 8cVS16 and 9fVS26, associated with the genus Legionella.
- Traditional and novel approaches such as standard culture technique, MALDI-TOF MS, gene sequencing, and whole-genome sequencing (WGS) analysis were combined to demonstrate that isolates belong to a new Legionella
- The finding suggests that, during the culture technique, special attention should be paid to the characteristics of the isolates that are less associated with the Legionella genus in order to investigate the differences found using more sensitive methods.