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Weather-Dependent Risk for Legionnaires’ Disease, United States
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Weather-Dependent Risk for Legionnaires’ Disease, United States

Jacob E Simmering, Linnea A Polgreen, Douglas B Hornick, Daniel K Sewell and Philip M Polgreen
Emerging infectious diseases, Vol.23(11), pp.1843-1851
11/2017
DOI: 10.3201/eid2311.170137
PMCID: PMC5652433
PMID: 29048279
url
https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2311.170137View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample and US weather data, we estimated the probability of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) being diagnosed as Legionnaires’ disease (LD). LD risk increases when weather is warm and humid. With warm weather, we found a dose-response relationship between relative humidity and the odds for LD. When the mean temperature was 60°–80°F with high humidity (>80.0%), the odds for CAP being diagnosed with LD were 3.1 times higher than with lower levels of humidity (<50.0%). Thus, in some regions (e.g., the Southwest), LD is rarely the cause of hospitalizations. In other regions and seasons (e.g., the mid-Atlantic in summer), LD is much more common. Thus, suspicion for LD should increase when weather is warm and humid. However, when weather is cold, dry, or extremely hot, empirically treating all CAP patients for LD might contribute to excessive antimicrobial drug use at a population level.
 Bacteria Weather Legionnaires’ disease Research antibiotic stewardship legionellosis Weather-Dependent Risk for Legionnaires’ Disease, United States pneumonia antimicrobial resistance Legionella pneumophilia temperature humidity seasonality

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