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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, January 2006, p. 980, Vol. 72, No. 1
0099-2240/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.72.1.980.2006
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Deja Vu All Over Again: Rapid Enumeration of Legionella pneumophila in Water


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LETTER
 
Delgado-Viscogliosi and colleagues recently reported a rapid method for detecting viable Legionella pneumophila in water using immunofluorescence microscopy (1). Carl Fliermans and colleagues reported a similar assay in this journal 24 years ago (3) and later reported an assay for viability using a tetrazolium dye (4). Both the papers published in the 1980s and the recently published paper reported that the immunofluorescence microscopy method detected greater numbers of bacterial cells than did culture, and both argued that the greater sensitivity of the microscopic method was probably due to poor culture recovery of the Legionella bacteria. Another possibility for this poor correlation is nonspecificity of the antibodies used. A number of clinical and environmental bacteria, many of which are deposited at the ATCC, cross-react with L. pneumophila polyvalent antibodies (2). The immunofluorescence microscopy enumeration method was in vogue for a number of years in the 1980s but fell out of favor due to the poor correlation between viable counts and the microscopic method. It is not clear to me that adding an assay for viability will improve the utility of this assay method, but knowing that the antibodies used do not cross-react with known cross-reacting strains would be useful information. It would be of importance for Delgado-Viscogliosi and colleagues to test their antibodies against the known cross-reacting bacteria deposited at ATCC, as well as to acknowledge the seminal work on this method by Fliermans and colleagues.


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REFERENCES
 
    1
  1. Delgado-Viscogliosi, P., T. Simonart, V. Parent, G. Marchand, M. Dobbelaere, E. Pierlot, V. Pierzo, F. Menard-Szczebara, E. Gaudard-Ferveur, K. Delabre, and J. M. Delattre. 2005. Rapid method for enumeration of viable Legionella pneumophila and other Legionella spp. in water. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 71:4086-4096.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
    2. 2
  2. Edelstein, P. H., and M. A. C. Edelstein. 1989. Evaluation of the Merifluor-Legionella immunofluorescent reagent for identifying and detecting 21 Legionella species. J. Clin. Microbiol. 27:2455-2458.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
    3. 3
  3. Fliermans, C. B., W. B. Cherry, L. H. Orrison, S. J. Smith, D. L. Tison, and D. H. Pope. 1981. Ecological distribution of Legionella pneumophila. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 41:9-16.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
    4. 4
  4. Fliermans, C. B., and R. S. Harvey. 1984. Effectiveness of 1-bromo-3-chloro-5,5-dimethylhydantoin against Legionella pneumophila in a cooling tower. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 47:1307-1310.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
Paul H. Edelstein
University of Pennsylvania Medical Center
4 Gates
3400 Spruce St.
Philadelphia, PA 19104-4283

E-mail: phe{at}mail.med.upenn.edu


Editor’s Note:


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LETTER 
 
The authors of the published article declined to respond.

Applied and Environmental Microbiology, January 2006, p. 980, Vol. 72, No. 1
0099-2240/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.72.1.980.2006
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.




This Article
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