Potting compost to carry warnings after gardener gets Legionnaire's

Published on Thursday 2 September 2010 18:23

Bags of potting compost are to carry health warnings after an elderly Scot contracted Legionnaire's disease through a cut on his hand.

The 67-year-old victim was struck down with Legionella longbeachae two days after suffering the gash while opening the bag of fertiliser.

The case last March follows three others in 2008 and 2009, where victims caught the same rare form of the life-threatening condition by inhaling droplets of water in the compost. All four incidents happened in Scotland.

They are the first cases of Legionnaire's disease linked to gardening in the UK.

However, the disease has previously been linked to gardening or potting mixes in Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States.

The UK Royal Horticultural Society is so concerned it has issued warnings about the risk of contracting Legionnaire's disease from handling compost.

It has also announced that bags of potting compost will carry warnings in future.

• Dangers of Legionnaire's disease

Dr Simon Patten, of Royal Alexandra Hospital, Paisley, and colleagues report the latest case in the Lancet and say the man was previously fit and healthy when he was admitted with an eight-day history of fever with trembling, confusion, lethargy and shortness of breath.

He had a high temperature and signs of pneumonia and a chest X-ray showed the left lung was completely opaque.

Viral pneumonia was suspected, but a range of tests, including for urinary infection, proved negative.

Antibiotics and other treatments were unable to reverse his deterioration and the man ended up in intensive care.

Doctors eventually had to wash out his lung to get a sputum sample, which later tested positive for Legionella longbeachae, which cannot be detected through urine.

Dr Patten and colleagues wrote: "When we questioned the patient to find out the source of this infection, we discovered that he was a keen gardener and had lacerated his left index finger two days before the onset of his symptoms, while planting with compost; we presumed that this cut was the site of entry of the organism."

They treated him with an antibiotic called levofloxacin, which is only used to treat life-threatening bacterial infections, and his condition began to improve.

He was discharged to a regular respiratory ward a week later before being discharged. Fortunately, by the time he was followed up in May he had made a complete recovery.

Last year retired gas engineer Drew Murphy, 59, was struck down with L longbeachae just days after opening a bag of fertiliser in his garden at Bothwell, South Lanarkshire.

He later collapsed with a fever and spent seven weeks in intensive care on a ventilator. At one point, his condition deteriorated so severely that doctors feared he might not survive. It was thought he contracted the potentially fatal bug by inhaling dust from compost he bought from a local shop.