Abstract

Legionella pneumophila was first introduced to the world after an outbreak in 1976 when the attendees of the Philadelphia convention of the American Legion were affected by a kind of pneumonia named Legionnaire's Disease (LD). To date, the problem has not been resolved, and it has been reported many outbreaks over the years. The topic of Legionella outbreaks is one of the most active areas, thus encouraging researchers to focus on how they could effectively monitor the water sources to prevent the risk of an outbreak and high mortality. Research into solving this problem and establishing a state of the art method is already in progress. This paper is an overview of legionella detection over the years. What happened to Legionella through the past challenging decades. Is there any certified reference method with a functionalized penetration into society for this controversial microorganism or a cutting-edge scenario offering a constructive solution to eliminate the potential risk of the outbreaks, also early identification and source tracking?

Keywords: Waterborne diseases; Microbiology