Doctors were today looking for a link between three cases of Legionnaires' disease in neighbouring East Sussex towns.

One sufferer from the potentially-fatal bug has been sent home from hospital while the others are making a good recovery.

Scientists are investigating how the victims, from Pevensey Bay, Eastbourne and Hailsham, came to be infected.

No single source for the disease has been identified and a spokesman for Eastbourne Downs Primary Care Trust said: "Public health doctors are working closely with environmental health officers of Eastbourne Borough Council and Wealden District Council.

"Inquiries to date, including testing water samples, have shown no links between the three cases.

"The three patients have been treated. One has gone home and the other two patients are making a good recovery in hospital."

The trust deals with around eight cases every year in the county but victims are usually elderly people who may be already in poor health.

Health workers have not released information about where the victims may have picked up the bug.

The cases come after a scare at Gatwick in September, when a security guard in the North Terminal fell ill.

Public health doctor Peter English said the airport was unlikely to be the carrier of the bug, which thrives in old-fashioned water-cooled air conditioning systems.

Earlier this year at least six people from Cumbria died after the disease was spread through the air conditioning of a leisure centre.

The bug cannot be spread person to person. It is contracted through inhaling tiny droplets of water. It can be treated with antibiotics.

The incubation period of the disease is between two and ten days. Symptoms include loss of appetite, feeling unwell, headache, muscle pain, a rapidly rising temperature and chills, stomach ache, diarrhoea, breathing problems and a dry cough.

Advice and information about Legionnaires' Disease can be found by contacting the NHS Direct helpline on 0845 4647, and its web site www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk