Re: Testing water for leptospirosis

On Aug 4, 12:02 am, John Gentile <yjg...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2007-08-03 17:41:46 -0400, "roboti...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
The problem with doing any environmental surveys is that even if you do
find the organism that does not equate to human infection. The organism
comes into the water ways by means of animal urine - I would then
assume that every river and lake has the potential to have the
organism. What is the incidence of Leptospirosis in your area?
Another question to ask is that even if exposed to the germ, how many
people actually come down withthe disease? If their immune system
fights off the infection they might not even know they had it, but they
may have antibodies to it and it might provide an immunity the next
time they run into it.
So in a nutshell, positive findings don't really mean much, and even
negative ones don't mean that the organism is not there, just that it
wasn't found at that time.

Thank you. I don't have the statistics to hand, so this is from
memory. In the United Kingdom, including Wales, in 2005 which were the
most recent stats I could get, there were 36 notified cases of Weil's
disease. Of these, 9 cases were recreational water users. Of those,
two were recreational swimmers. In 2006, there was one death
attributed to Leptospirosis infection. Given the reports of thousands
of cases and hundreds of deaths from Leptospirosis infection (I'd
presume Weil's disease) in Thailand, I would guess that means that the
incidence of the organism is low in the UK, or there would be more
cases.

I have no information on the incidence of Leptospirosis in my local
area so cannot say if it is higher or lower. With the small number of
cases random sampling effects will be large.

I've been asked to look into Weil's disease further as I have a degree
in Microbiology, though it was a long time ago and I went on to have a
career in a different area. To an extent, I'm the one eyed man in the
country of the blind.

I believe that the bacterium responsible for Weil's disease develops
new strains every year, and that immunity can be gained for one strain
with a subclinical exposure, but this will not protect against other
strains.

Looking at the figures, it looks like the risk is low, and the near
paranoia about Weil's disease in the UK is not justified by the amount
of risk. If it were possible to test for Weil's disease, which given
my resources, it's not, that would have helped quantify the risk.
Because many more people (still small) drown while swimming than catch
Weil's disease, it appears that selecting swimming sites which reduce
drowning risk (e.g. smaller lakes) rather than those that reduce risk
of Weil's disease (bigger lakes, large and/or quickly flowing rivers)
is the better option.

.

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