Al-Matawah Q, Al-Azmi A, Al-Zenki S and Uldum S
New Sequence Types for Environmental Legionella pneumophila Isolated from Kuwait
A total of 102 environmental isolates of Legionella pneumophila (sg 1 = 19; sg 3 = 33; sg 4= 4 sg 7= 39; sg 10=7) were genotyped by the consensus Sequenced-Based Typing (SBT) scheme developed by the ESCMID Study Group for Legionella Infections (ESGLI former EWGLI). Results showed that the Legionella isolates were discriminated into 11 distinct SBT profiles, of which six (ST1223, ST1436, ST1555, ST1604, ST1718, and ST1719) were new to the ESGLI SBT database. Results showed that ST1718 of L. pneumophila serogroup 7 (38 isolates) was the most prevalent ST. In addition to ST1718, other prevalent STs were identified included ST336 (20 isolates), ST93 (13 isolates), and ST1 (10 isolates). Furthermore, all of the ST1 L. pneumophila sergroup 1 isolates were of the Oxford/OLDA subgroup. This is the first study to describe the use of SBT to characterize environmental Legionella pneumophila isolates from domestic water systems and cooling towers in the State of Kuwait. This baseline data will form the basis for the development of a Legionella environmental surveillance program, which will be used for future epidemiological investigations.
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