Short-Term and Long-Term Survival and Virulence of Legionella pneumophila in the Defined Freshwater Medium Fraquil

Legionella pneumophila (Lp) is the etiological agent responsible for Legionnaires’ disease, a potentially fatal pulmonary infection. Lp lives and multiplies inside protozoa in a variety of natural and man-made water systems prior to human infection. Fraquil, a defined freshwater medium, was used as...

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Main Authors:	Mendis, Nilmini, McBride, Peter, Faucher, Sébastien P.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2015
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4583229/

id	pubmed-4583229
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-45832292015-10-02 Short-Term and Long-Term Survival and Virulence of Legionella pneumophila in the Defined Freshwater Medium Fraquil Mendis, Nilmini McBride, Peter Faucher, Sébastien P. Research Article Legionella pneumophila (Lp) is the etiological agent responsible for Legionnaires’ disease, a potentially fatal pulmonary infection. Lp lives and multiplies inside protozoa in a variety of natural and man-made water systems prior to human infection. Fraquil, a defined freshwater medium, was used as a highly reproducible medium to study the behaviour of Lp in water. Adopting a reductionist approach, Fraquil was used to study the impact of temperature, pH and trace metal levels on the survival and subsequent intracellular multiplication of Lp in Acanthamoeba castellanii, a freshwater protozoan and a natural host of Legionella. We show that temperature has a significant impact on the short- and long-term survival of Lp, but that the bacterium retains intracellular multiplication potential for over six months in Fraquil. Moreover, incubation in Fraquil at pH 4.0 resulted in a rapid decline in colony forming units, but was not detrimental to intracellular multiplication. In contrast, variations in trace metal concentrations had no impact on either survival or intracellular multiplication in amoeba. Our data show that Lp is a resilient bacterium in the water environment, remaining infectious to host cells after six months under the nutrient-deprived conditions of Fraquil. Public Library of Science 2015-09-25 /pmc/articles/PMC4583229/ /pubmed/26406895 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139277 Text en © 2015 Mendis et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Mendis, Nilmini McBride, Peter Faucher, Sébastien P.
spellingShingle	Mendis, Nilmini McBride, Peter Faucher, Sébastien P. Short-Term and Long-Term Survival and Virulence of Legionella pneumophila in the Defined Freshwater Medium Fraquil
author_facet	Mendis, Nilmini McBride, Peter Faucher, Sébastien P.
author_sort	Mendis, Nilmini
title	Short-Term and Long-Term Survival and Virulence of Legionella pneumophila in the Defined Freshwater Medium Fraquil
title_short	Short-Term and Long-Term Survival and Virulence of Legionella pneumophila in the Defined Freshwater Medium Fraquil
title_full	Short-Term and Long-Term Survival and Virulence of Legionella pneumophila in the Defined Freshwater Medium Fraquil
title_fullStr	Short-Term and Long-Term Survival and Virulence of Legionella pneumophila in the Defined Freshwater Medium Fraquil
title_full_unstemmed	Short-Term and Long-Term Survival and Virulence of Legionella pneumophila in the Defined Freshwater Medium Fraquil
title_sort	short-term and long-term survival and virulence of legionella pneumophila in the defined freshwater medium fraquil
description	Legionella pneumophila (Lp) is the etiological agent responsible for Legionnaires’ disease, a potentially fatal pulmonary infection. Lp lives and multiplies inside protozoa in a variety of natural and man-made water systems prior to human infection. Fraquil, a defined freshwater medium, was used as a highly reproducible medium to study the behaviour of Lp in water. Adopting a reductionist approach, Fraquil was used to study the impact of temperature, pH and trace metal levels on the survival and subsequent intracellular multiplication of Lp in Acanthamoeba castellanii, a freshwater protozoan and a natural host of Legionella. We show that temperature has a significant impact on the short- and long-term survival of Lp, but that the bacterium retains intracellular multiplication potential for over six months in Fraquil. Moreover, incubation in Fraquil at pH 4.0 resulted in a rapid decline in colony forming units, but was not detrimental to intracellular multiplication. In contrast, variations in trace metal concentrations had no impact on either survival or intracellular multiplication in amoeba. Our data show that Lp is a resilient bacterium in the water environment, remaining infectious to host cells after six months under the nutrient-deprived conditions of Fraquil.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2015
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4583229/
_version_	1613479876832002048

Short-Term and Long-Term Survival and Virulence of Legionella pneumophila in the Defined Freshwater Medium Fraquil

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