Tag Archives: Illness

5 sick, 2 kids with HUS; raw milk common theme in Missouri E. coli outbreak

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The Columbia Tribune reports a Boone County, Missouri, 2-year-old infected with E. coli remained hospitalized this morning in Columbia as one of five Central Missouri residents battling the bacteria.

Geni Alexander, public information officer for the Columbia/Boone County Department of Public Health and Human Services, said the 2-year-old is one of three Boone County residents with either a confirmed or suspected case of the illness.

Alexander said health officials have determined that consumption of raw dairy products was the only common link for possible exposure among the three Boone County victims. She did not disclose the gender of the victims.

"Each person was identified as a raw dairy consumer," Alexander said, "but we can’t say they all got it from the same place."

The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services is investigating an increase in cases of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli in Central Missouri from late March through early April. In addition to the Boone County 2-year-old, state health officials reported Thursday that a 17-month-old toddler also developed symptoms of hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, a severe condition that can lead to permanent kidney damage in some who survive the illness.

Alexander said the victims of the three Boone County cases range in age from 2 to 31. The 17-month-old victim is not a Boone County resident, she said.

"In public health, we always advise to stay away from those raw dairy products," she said.

A table of raw milk related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/rawmilk.

Go back to sleep: 29 sick; multistate outbreak of shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O26 linked to raw clover sprouts at Jimmy John’s appears over

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A total of 29 persons were infected with the outbreak strain of STEC O26 linked to clovers sprouts served on sandwiches served at Jimmy John’s in 11 U.S. states.

The Centers for Disease Control reports in its final update today that among 29 ill persons, illness onset dates ranged from December 25, 2011 to March 3, 2012. Ill persons range in age from 9 years to 57 years old, with a median age of 26 years. Eighty-nine percent of ill persons are female. Among the 29 ill persons, 7 (24%) were hospitalized. None have developed HUS, and no deaths have been reported.

Based on previous outbreaks associated with sprouts, investigation findings have demonstrated that sprout seeds might become contaminated in several ways. They could be grown with contaminated water or improperly composted manure fertilizer. They could be contaminated with feces from domestic or wild animals, or with runoff from animal production facilities, or by improperly cleaned growing or processing equipment. Seeds also might become contaminated during harvesting, distribution, or storage. Many clover seeds are produced for agricultural use, so they might not be processed, handled, and stored as human food would. Conditions suitable for sprouting the seed also permit bacteria that might be present on seeds to grow and multiply rapidly.

In 1999, FDA released guidance to help seed producers and sprout growers enhance the safety of their products. Specific measures recommended in the guidelines include a seed disinfection step and microbiologic tests of water that has been used to grow each lot of sprouts. The microbiologic tests currently recommended under this guidance would not identify the presence of STEC O26.

No one has gotten sick from Nova Scotia meat?

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Uh-huh.

Members of the Nova Scotia Agriculture Department (that’s a province in Canada) told the public accounts committee no one in Nova Scotia has become ill because of problems in the province’s meat inspection program.

The Herald News reports the health types were there to give an update on their response to a report from the auditor general in November that said the department wasn’t doing a good job keeping watch over the province’s slaughterhouses and meat processing plants.

In the report, Jacques Lapointe said, among other things, there was a lack of monthly inspections and inconsistent followups when deficiencies were found, and there didn’t seem to be any enforcement action taken when deficiencies weren’t corrected.

Mike Horwich, the director of food protection with the department, told the committee, "We’ve accepted all the recommendations (of the auditor general) and we’re working toward each and every one of them. Some are further along than others, but we hope to implement them by at least the end of next year."

He described the system that prevents bacteria from getting through the slaughter process and into the consumer food supply as a series of fences along a track, and said that even if something happened that allowed the bacteria to get past one barrier, it would be stopped by another.

He said the department is working toward having regular monthly inspections. "We strive to achieve those, but again, those monthly inspections are just one barrier, they’re not the be-all and end-all. We are confident that the system that we have now and the process that we have now, with inspectors on site, ends up being part of a system that produces a really good product."

 

50 from Kansas treated for food poisoning on New York school trip

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The 16-year-old daughter in Guelph left for a March-break school trip to Montreal, to learn French stuff.

But I can’t make her lunch.

Fifty students and chaperones from De Soto High School near Kansas City have been treated for food poisoning symptoms at a western Pennsylvania hospital after they stopped on their way home from a band trip to New York when they became ill.

A spokeswoman for Excela Frick Hospital says 40 students and 10 chaperones have been treated at the hospital in Mount Pleasant, about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

The group ate somewhere in New York before 164 of them headed home on three buses early Wednesday.

Those sickened have been treated and were packing up to continue their return trip to Kansas by Wednesday afternoon.

That could prolong and disperse the barfing. But I’d want my daughter home too.

Cheerleader toll climbs to 200 after Washington tournament

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Nearly 200 people across the state have reported illnesses after attending a high school cheer and dance event in Everett earlier this month.

Preliminary survey results show at least 192 reports of illness from participants and adults who attended the event Feb. 4. Students and adults from Columbia River and Skyview high schools in Vancouver attended the event.

The Washington State Department of Health is investigating the cause of the outbreak.

As part of the investigation, questionnaires were sent to participants and their families and stool samples are being collected for testing at the state Public Health Laboratories.

More than 3,000 people attended the event and more than 1,000 competed in the State Cheerleading and Salute to Spirit in cheer and dance/drill.

Poultry or smoked fish and sprouts? Yes, I remember, I had lasagna; E. coli O104 in French travelers to Turkey

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I look forward to Thursdays because a new issue of Eurosurveillance appears and they always have outbreak summaries of interest.

French health-types report eight cases of diarrhea, including two cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), identified among 22 French tourists who travelled to Turkey in September 2011. A strain of Escherichia coli O104:H4 stx2-positive,eae-negative, hlyA-negative, aggR-positive, ESBL-negative was isolated from one HUS case. Molecular analyses show this strain to be genetically similar but not indistinguishable from the E. coli O104:H4 2011 outbreak strain of France and Germany.

Although the source of infection was not identified, the authors concluded the HUS cases had probably been infected in Turkey but there was no evidence to link this STEC O104:H4 outbreak to the consumption of fenugreek sprouts, as was the case for the German and French outbreaks in May to June 2011. None of the 22 travel group members reported the consumption of sprouts before and during their trip to Turkey.

Except that over there, sprouts are added to everything, more so than a Jimmy John’s sandwich.

Turkey is among several destinations where European tourists had previously travelled before developing STEC O104 infection between 2004 and 2009 (n=4), along with Afghanistan, Egypt and Tunisia. This outbreak supports data suggesting that the STEC serogroup O104 circulates in these areas. Further evidence is provided by the three additional cases that were subsequently identified in Germany and Denmark among persons also returning from Turkey within the same approximate time frame. Public health authorities and clinicians should be vigilant for possible STEC O104 infection in individuals returning from these areas who present with post-diarrheal HUS.

The complete paper is available at http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=20065.

Outbreak of haemolytic uraemic syndrome due to Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O104:H4 among tourists returning from Turkey, September 2011
26.jan.12
Eurosurveillance, Volume 17, Issue 4
N Jourdan-da Silva, M Watrin, F X Weill, L A King , M Gouali, A Mailles, D van Cauteren, M Bataille, S Guettier, C Castrale, P Henry, P Mariani, V Vaillant, H de Valk

Cucumbers fingered again linked to foodborne microsporidia in Sweden

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When a strain of shiga toxin producing E. coli (VTEC O8:H19) was found in Spanish cucumbers in May 2011 during the Germany-based sprout outbreak that killed 53 – and subsequently proven to not be the outbreak strain – producers and politicians focused on how public health got it wrong, and demands for compensation.

Shouldn’t it have been worrisome that any shiga-toxin producing E. coli was found at retail, in a cucumber?

Researchers in Sweden are now reporting that microsporidia may be an underreported source of foodborne illness after cucumbers were linked to dozens of sick people visiting a hotel in Sweden. Abstract below.

Microsporidia are spore-forming intracellular parasites that infrequently cause disease in immunocompetent persons. This study describes the first report of a foodborne microsporidiosis outbreak which affected persons visiting a hotel in Sweden.

Enterocytozoon bieneusi was identified in stool samples from 7/11 case-patients, all six sequenced samples were genotype C. To confirm that this was not a chance finding, 19 stool samples submitted by healthy persons from a comparable group who did not visit the hotel on that day were tested; all were negative for microsporidia. A retrospective cohort study identified 135 case-patients (attack rate 30%). The median incubation period was 9 days.

Consumption of cheese sandwiches [relative risk (RR) 4·1, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1·4–12·2] and salad (RR 2·1, 95% CI 1·1–4) were associated with illness. Both items contained pre-washed, ready-to-eat cucumber slices.

Microsporidia may be an under-reported cause of gastrointestinal outbreaks; we recommend that microsporidia be explored as potential causative agents in food- and waterborne outbreaks, especially when no other organisms are identified.

Epidemiology and Infection March 2012, 140:519-527

V. Decraene, M. Lebbad, S. Botero-Kleiven, A.-M. Gustavsson and M. Lofdahl

Consumers as critical control point: 190 sickened in multistate outbreak of human Salmonella Heidelberg infections linked to kosher broiled chicken livers

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I don’t know who eats broiled chicken livers, but enough people do that 190 of them got sick in six states since April 2011, from Salmonella Heidelberg in the partially-cooked product.

The outbreak is another talking point in the point-the-finger approach to foodborne illness: dumb consumers, you should read the labels and know these thingies need to be fully cooked. And watch the cross-contamination.

• A total of 190 illnesses due to Salmonella Heidelberg with the outbreak pattern were reported from 6 states.
• The number of ill persons identified in each state the product is distributed to is as follows: New York (109), New Jersey (62), Pennsylvania (10), Maryland (6), Ohio (2), and Minnesota (1).
• Collaborative investigative efforts of state, local, and federal public health and regulatory agencies indicated that a product labeled as “kosher broiled chicken livers” is the source of this outbreak.
• Contaminated "kosher broiled chicken livers" were recalled from grocery stores but may still be in consumers’ homes.
• Among persons for whom information is available in in these states, ill persons ranged in age from <1 to 97 years with a median age of 14 years. Forty-nine percent were female. Among the 154 ill persons with available information, 30 (19%) were hospitalized. No deaths were reported.

Consumers may have incorrectly thought the use of the word “broiled” in the label meant the chicken liver was ready-to-eat; however, these chicken livers must be fully cooked before eating. How the hell would anyone know?

Barfing outbreaks not related to Republican primary, but sick preparers; norovirus rampant in Iowa

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An alarming number of outbreaks of stomach illness across the state should be a reminder to Iowans participating in gatherings where food is served. With more than a week remaining for holiday and year-end celebrations, the Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH) is asking sick Iowans to think twice before preparing food for others.

"If you’re healthy and you’ve been healthy for the last few days, go ahead and mix up a batch of cookies or slice up a fruit tray," said IDPH Medical Director Dr. Patricia Quinlisk. "But if you’ve had any sort of stomach illness, do not prepare food of any kind for others. In particular, symptoms such as vomiting and diarrhea should be your ticket out of the kitchen until 48 hours have passed since your recovery."

In the last 10 days, IDPH has been investigating reports of eight medium-to-large outbreaks of probable norovirus in five counties.

Three groups got ill after eating at a restaurant where several food handlers had also been ill. Outbreaks were also associated with events like holiday parties and holiday potlucks, where foods were likely prepared and served by recently ill people.

"We’re also getting lots anecdotal reports of probable norovirus outbreaks in other areas of the state," Quinlisk added. "This virus can be a real holiday spoiler, making your friends and loved ones sick for several days. So, if you are or have been sick, you’ll just have to wait for the next opportunity to make your signature fudge – you’re off kitchen duty until 48 hours after your symptoms have stopped."

Nuevo Folleto Informativo: Brote causado por contaminación cruzada y empleados enfermos: Pollo crudo y lechuga fueron lavados en el mismo lavamanos

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 Traducido por Gonzalo Erdozain
Resumen del folleto informativo mas reciente:

– 75 enfermos de salmonelosis tras haber comido en Tenth Hole Tea Rooms en Southsea (Reino Unido)
– Pasta precocida, trapos y empleados dieron positivo en el test de Salmonella
– No lave carnes crudas. Salmonella y otros patógenos pueden ser salpicados hasta a 3 pies del lavamanos.

Los folletos informativos son creados semanalmente y puestos en restaurantes, tiendas y granjas, y son usados para entrenar y educar a través del mundo. Si usted quiere proponer un tema o mandar fotos para los folletos, contacte a Ben Chapman a benjamin_chapman@ncsu.edu.

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@benjaminchapman y @barfblog.