Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the risk or legionellosis within tne hospital water supplies. Legionella species are ubiquitous in various water systems. It is not surprising that hospital waters may be colonized with legionnaire bacterium. Cold and hot water samples from different hospitals of Tehran were screened, using standard culture method and PCR technique. A total of 132 cold and hot water samples were collected during the summer of 2006. All samples were concentrated and cultured on standard BCYE agar after pretreatment. The mip gene based primer system were then used to detect mip protein of L. pneumophila within each hospital water sample. The results were obtained from culturing and PCR compared to each other. The water samples that analyzed in this study were collected from hospitals and medical institution located in different parts of the city. Legionella were isolated from the total of 30 water samples (22.7). The mip based primer sets by amplicon size of 630 bp detected Legionella genome from approximately (37) of the culture positive samples that indicating they could be considered as L. pneumophila. The results showed that the risk of nosocomial legionellosis could not be excluded from the city hospitals due to.significant contamination of the hospital water supplies. We concluded that hospital water screening for Legionella pneumophila contamination will help the diagnosis the threat of nosocomial outbreak of legionnaires' disease and also the evaluation of decontamination process of water supplies within high risk areas. © 2008 Asian Network for Scientific Information.