ATLANTA — Cases of Legionnaire's disease have tripled in the last decade, U.S. health officials said Thursday, but the risk of dying from it is lower because of more effective treatment.
Legionnaire's usually strikes the elderly and can cause deadly pneumonia. The germ spreads through mist or vapor from contaminated water or air conditioning systems.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports there were more than 3,522 cases in 2009, the most since Legionnaire's was first identified in 1976. There were only 1,110 cases in 2000. CDC officials think there may be more cases partly because there are more old people.
To be sure, Legionnaire's remains uncommon. Just 8 percent of its victims died in 2009, compared to 20 percent in the 1980s and 1990s. But it still kills hundreds of Americans each year, and leaves an estimated 8,000 to 18,000 hospitalized.
The increase in cases is worrisome, said study co-author Dr. Lee Hampton, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We need to minimize the risk of people dying from this," he said.
The disease got its name from an outbreak at a Philadelphia convention of the American Legion in 1976 when more than 200 men were sickened and 34 died. The outbreak drew intense media coverage, and months later health investigators fingered the bacterial cause. The germ apparently had spread through the convention hotel's air-conditioning system.
Early signs of the disease can include high fever, chills and a cough. Fortunately, some of the drugs most commonly used against pneumonia are first-line treatments against Legionnaire's.
Cases of the disease held relatively steady in the 1980s-90s, but have risen since 2000.
The CDC relies on doctors, hospitals and state health departments to report cases when they occur, and agency officials believe the national case count is an underestimate.
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