And after running tests, they confirmed legionella caused her illness. Her two sons who live with her never got Legionnaires' disease. Neither did her co-workers at Summit County Children Services. After being treated with antibiotics in the hospital for a week, Woolridge recovered. But doctors never figured out how she contracted the disease.
Legionella thrives in warm-water environments both indoors and out.
Fortunately, experts say, the vast majority of people who come in contact with the bacteria never get sick. No one really knows the actual number of cases because many are diagnosed and treated as pneumonia, said Dr. James Allen, an associate professor of internal medicine and head of the intensive care unit at Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus. Ohio typically ranks in the top two or three states in the country for reported cases of Legionnaires' disease, said Dr. Elizabeth Koch of the Ohio Department of Health. However, it's not known whether the number of cases are really higher in Ohio or whether there's just better identification and confirmation of the disease, she said. There were 121 cases in Ohio in 2000, up from 85 a year earlier.