I had to do some digging, because my experience with Lepto is all in cows. But apparently, pneumonia isn't uncommon, but it appears to be more of a secondary thing due yo general debilitation and organ damage... IOW, it's probably not "lepto pneumonia". But a secondary mycoplasma or bacterial infection.
Pulmonary involvement of leptospirosis occurs in 20%-70% of patients[11] and is mostly secondary to renal and hepatic dysfunction as an immunity-mediated status[12,13], including mild to severe pneumonia, deadly alveolar hemorrhage, adult respiratory distress syndrome, etc.Mar 16, 2021
However, it apparently happened last year (which is probably why doctors are looking at it now)
Severe community-acquired pneumonia caused by Leptospira interrogans: A case report and review of literature
Severe community-acquired pneumonia caused by Leptospira interrogans: A case report and review of literature
www.wjgnet.com
Our experience with lepto started early, as it was endemic on our farm (lots of deer, coyotes and other carriers). We had to vaccinate the cattle every 90 days, as otherwise we'd see a break in clinical cases... generally an udder infection which caused a specific type of mastitis we learned to recognize instantly. You couldn't treat it by infusing the udder with antibiotics... you had to hit the whole cow with IV tetracycline. We never saw the expensive and frustrating late term abortions... right about the time you were ready to dry her off in anticipation of her new calf in 2 months... you'd walk in to a dead calf in the gutter. Our vax program prevented that.
But we did see a couple of acute cases, including a cow whose entire udder filled with blood, and her kidneys were badly damaged. She lived long enough to produce a world record holding-for-milk- production daughter.
Interestingly, we've never vaccinated a dog for lepto, and to our knowledge, never had a case. I have used doxycycline on a few farm dogs over the years, more because I suspected Lyme, but even before that was known, most of them perked up within 2 days. Some sort of debilitating infection, but no idea if it was lepto.
Summerthyme
I'm as confused as you are though. I thought that antibiotics didn't work, if this is Legionnaire's, it's bacterial and they should've worked. I think it's a still wait and see situtation but that we'll get clarification next week. Next post I will post the google translate of the spanish language article attached to the tweet.
You can see what was originally posted a few posts down as naegling62 quoted it. A sad story and situation for a high school football player.
