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Home Newsroom Using genomics to better detect outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease

Using genomics to better detect outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease

Media Contact
16th January, 2025

Researchers at NSW Health Pathology and the University of Sydney are working together to design a new integrated legionellosis surveillance system, using genomic testing to improve detection of legionella outbreaks.

Legion­naires’ dis­ease is an infec­tion of the lungs that is spread to humans by breath­ing in droplets of water con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with legionel­la bac­te­ria. The most com­mon sources of this bac­te­ria are air con­di­tion­ing cool­ing towers.

There have been sev­er­al large out­breaks of Legion­naires’ dis­ease in Syd­ney in the past few years, and pub­lic health author­i­ties need bet­ter tools to help them con­trol out­breaks more quickly.

A new research project is aim­ing to bring togeth­er the lat­est in genomics tech­nol­o­gy and a range of pub­lic health organ­i­sa­tions to improve how we detect and respond to outbreaks.

NSW Health Pathol­o­gy (NSWHP) is the host organ­i­sa­tion for the project being led by Chief Inves­ti­ga­tors, Pro­fes­sor Vitali Sintchenko (NSWHP and Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney) and Dr Eby Sim (Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney). (pic­tured above)

The research team is also part­ner­ing with Health Pro­tec­tion NSW, and Pub­lic Health Units, in West­ern Syd­ney and South East Syd­ney Local Health Districts.

They’ve been award­ed a $500,000 Trans­la­tion­al Research Grant through the NSW Office of Health and Med­ical Research to assess the effec­tive­ness of whole-genome sequenc­ing for inte­grat­ed sur­veil­lance for legionellosis.

A man in a white lab coat sitting a desk with a microscope, smiling up at the camera.
Prof Vitali Sintchenko in the lab­o­ra­to­ry at Westmead.

“Pub­lic Health author­i­ties aim to iden­ti­fy clus­ters of cas­es as soon as pos­si­ble in order to remove the source of infec­tion and pre­vent fur­ther spread in the com­mu­ni­ty,” Vitali explains.

“Grow­ing Legionel­la in the lab is a com­plex process, it takes a long time, and cul­tures are not often avail­able because more cas­es of legionel­la infec­tion are diag­nosed by PCR testing.

“So, this project is going to use clever genomics that can col­lect genom­ic infor­ma­tion with­out cul­ture direct­ly from res­pi­ra­to­ry sam­ples. That will increase the num­ber of rel­e­vant cas­es that can be inves­ti­gat­ed with­out rely­ing on culture.

“The oth­er part of the project is to bring togeth­er mul­ti­ple stake­hold­ers – pub­lic health units, spe­cial­ists in envi­ron­men­tal health, clin­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal microbiology.

“Our team is focused on a whole-of-sys­tem approach so that dif­fer­ent types of data can be mapped togeth­er, and genomics can hope­ful­ly save time by iden­ti­fy­ing com­mon­al­i­ties, or links between cas­es, that oth­er­wise would not have been recog­nised as part of a cluster.”

Dr Eby Sim says the genom­ic sequenc­ing tech­nol­o­gy being used by the research team at West­mead will sig­nif­i­cant­ly stream­line the process of search­ing for match­es between samples.

“Legionel­la is hard to grow in a lab­o­ra­to­ry, and the cul­ture takes many days,” he said.

A man in a white lab coat sits at a desk with a computer.
Dr Eby Sim in the laboratory.

“Here, we are attempt­ing to bypass the growth of Legionel­la pneu­mophi­la in the lab­o­ra­to­ry and direct­ly ‘fish out’ its genom­ic sig­na­ture from a spec­i­men, which is very help­ful for link­ing cas­es and clus­ters together.”

“We also want to make sure that out­breaks don’t keep expand­ing so we can assist pub­lic health units in find­ing hot spots and respond­ing to them faster,” said Eby.

Vitali says the research project will take two years to complete.

“The suc­cess of this com­pet­i­tive grant appli­ca­tion is due to our part­ner­ship between Health Pro­tec­tion NSW, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney and also sup­port from ICPMR and NSW Health Pathology’s Pub­lic Health Pathol­o­gy office.

“What we want to see, if every­thing goes as we planned, is that NSW Health Pathology’s genomics is inte­grat­ed into the envi­ron­men­tal and pub­lic health mon­i­tor­ing and response, reduc­ing the time it takes to iden­ti­fy clus­ters of legionellosis.”

A large laboratory filled with equipment.
The lab­o­ra­to­ry where much of the research will be con­duct­ed at ICPMR, Westmead.

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