Legionella pneumophila, the most commonly identified causative agent in drinking water associated with disease outbreaks, can be harbored by and released from drinking water biofilms. In this study, the release of biofilm-associated L. pneumophila under simulated drinking water flow containing a disinfectant residual was examined. Meanwhile, the inactivation and infectivity (to amoebae) of the released L. pneumophila were studied. To simulate drinking water system conditions, biofilms were prepared under either disinfectant exposure (pre-disinfected biofilms) or disinfectant-free (untreated biofilms) conditions, respectively. For experiments with water flow containing a disinfectant to release the biofilm-associated L. pneumophila from these two types of biofilms, the L. pneumophila release kinetics from pre-disinfected and untreated biofilms under flow condition were not statistically different (One-way ANOVA, p>0.05). However, inactivation of the L. pneumophila released from pre-disinfected biofilms was 1-2 times higher and amoeba infectivity was 2-29 times lower than that from untreated biofilms. The higher disinfectant resistance of L. pneumophila released from untreated biofilms was presumably influenced by the detachment of a larger amount of biofilm material (determined by 16S rRNA qPCR) surrounding the released L. pneumophila. This study highlights the interaction among disinfectant residual, biofilms, and L. pneumophila, which provides guidelines to assess and control pathogen risk.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 16. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 08 October 2018.
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#2,534,118
of 27,521,961 outputs
Outputs from Environmental Science & Technology
#2,997
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Outputs of similar age
#47,529
of 431,485 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Environmental Science & Technology
#54
of 263 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 27,521,961 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 90th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 22,233 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 17.9. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 431,485 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 88% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 263 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 79% of its contemporaries.
