Legionella pneumonia appeared during hospitalization in a patient with hematological malignancy confirmed by sputum culture after negative urine antigen test

Publication date: Available online 17 January 2018
Source:Journal of Infection and Chemotherapy
Author(s): Ryota Hase, Kazuyasu Miyoshi, Yasuhiro Matsuura, Yasunobu Endo, Masaki Nakamura, Yoshihito Otsuka
Legionella pneumophila is recognized as a common causative organism for community-acquired pneumonia, but it is rarely a causative organism for hospital-acquired pneumonia, except in cases of hospital outbreak. Recently, most of the Legionella cases have been diagnosed using the urine antigen test. However, this test can reliably detect only L. pneumophila serogroup 1. Here we report a 63-year-old male patient who was recently diagnosed with acute leukemia and treated with chemotherapy and who developed pneumonia on hospital day 8 during the nadir phase. He was later diagnosed with Legionella pneumonia by culture despite a negative urine antigen test. This case suggests that Legionella pneumonia is an important differential diagnosis for pneumonia in inpatients in the early phase of hospitalization and that when Legionella infection is clinically suspected, culture using selective media or molecular tests should be performed even if the urine antigen test is negative.



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